Symphony of Flesh and Bone
by TactfulTourniquet
Summary: AU : Will has a car crash and loses parts of his ability to remember. The disorder is diagnosed as a temporary memory loss. Among other things, he does not recognize his fiance Hannibal and (of some unknown reason) suddenly thinks that instead Frederick Chilton, who always showed mutual interest for Will, is his life companion. A struggle between the psychiatrists sets in.
1. Information

Hello first, dear readers :)

Just before you start reading the story I want you to know something about the AU-Universe I put it in (so that there is no confusion here in the first place ;3).

In my AU, after Will has shot Abel Gideon, Hannibal has taken even more care of the profiler and finally decided to diagnoze the encephalitis earlier so it could be healed properly. After this he decides to invite Will to his home, pour some wine and tell him everything (EVERYTHING. Cannibalism and romantic feelings included). After this information drunken Will is shocked and desperate but, well, dizzy too, so he soon passes out on Hannibal's couch and falls asleep. Hannibal covers him with a blanket and stays with him the whole night. In the morning when Will wakes up, the first thing Hannibal does is to kiss and tell him, how much he means to him. Will, after some serious thoughts, admits to himself that he loves Hannibal too, despite everything, even cannibalism.

They become a couple then and are soon engaged afterwards. (Meanwhile Freddie Lounds is killed and Frederick Chilton reveals Will his true feelings as well but Will denies him… more or less willingful.)

At this point the story takes place and I really hope you still want to read it ^^'

Here is the whole summary again (it was too long to fit in, unfortunately) :

* * *

_AU : Will has a car crash and loses parts of his ability_  
_to remember. The disorder is diagnosed as a temporary memory loss. Among other things, he does not recognize his fiance Hannibal again and (of some unknown reason) suddenly thinks that instead Frederick Chilton is his life companion. Federick, who has already expressed mutual interest for the profiler several times before, takes the unexpected opportunity leaving Will in this belief, also because the doctor warns to confront Will too early with the truth, as this could cause unpleasant consequences. Too rapid comparison with this might put his memories to sleep forever._  
_So Hannibal must therefore bear that HIS fiance suddenly lives in Fredericks house and sees him as his only true love, at least for a certain amount of time. And the uncertainty, whether Will will ever remember again or not, almost kills him. _

_Especially since Frederick of course uses the bestowed time together to convince Will that he is obviously the perfect choice for being his lover. _

_However, Will has to struggle with conflicting feelings himself and comes relatively soon to a point where he no longer knows how to distinguish reality from memory and truth from lies. They melt into each other, only to repel again. He is caught between the idea that he found a tender,caring man in Frederick and confused by the powerful presence of the psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, who torments him with feelings that no loyal, happy man should ever be aware of. _

* * *

In the meantime I try to write the former events out. in a collection of Hannigram/ChillyWilly/Brownham OS called "Family Portrait."

Maybe you want to take a look at this work as well :  s/10581396/1/Family-Portrait

And now, finally, have fun with reading!

* * *

PS : I'd appreciate your feedback very much ^^


	2. Prologue

**Prologue**

**~Amnesia~**

_**A **hospital is the preferred residence of God for life and death._

_Disease and decay are as much at home here as the miracle of birth and the iniquities of deformity. We all see the light of day after we were wrapped and bathed several months in meat and darkness. We all say goodbye to this light with a final decline of our eyelashes following a silently pronounced __**Farewell** to return to the darkness from which we crawled to the top, naked, vulnerable, smeared with blood and grease. Screaming._  
_The origin refers to us as the mothers who gave birth and the doctors who rescued same source that nourished us, happening at the end of our rotting corpses amicably and sipping the essence of our souls like an aged wine pressed from the curved grapes of the finest vines. _

_Is this the justice of God? _

_No. _

_It is the settlement of mortality. Angels and demons operate without change, smell - and grace. They know no limit, no restriction of the year, because it does not exist. No other species except ours maintains the biblical mercy to be allowed to die._

_The grave is our privilege._

_The limited rite of our cells drives us to achieve great things in the gift of time. Creation and creativity evolve, revolutionize. Love and hate equally bloom and bear their splendid thorns on display, sliding down on the flowers, stab and carve a pattern._  
_Meat is a perishable commodity._  
_This makes it juicy, the taste is sharpened._  
_Blood clots after certain duration._  
_This is good because it refreshes the thirst for more._

_In general,people are a very fragile self-cosmos, each for him/herself, beyond gender, color, race or nation. Bones splinter. Teeth break. Hair tears. Skin burns. This is the same for each one. Everyone feels pain and everyone has tears that must be shed._

_I cannot remember when I cried last time. Over the years, the events have become rare for it. Usually one cries because of grief, because of compassion. Or one may cry about a personal loss and sometimes even in temper._  
_Why should I ever cry? There was no valid reason, no tragedy, no family, no friends, I had to mourn for. Not after I had finished with the experiences of my youth._

_But now this condition has changed significantly within the last few months and it confuses me till today. Now there's someone who touches me. Someone who moves the heart in me. Who inflates my lungs and stops my breath._

_The One. The first. The last._

_Every day I look at him and every night I give myself this consideration anew closely by letting my mouth wander over his body, inhale him with my hands, cover his existence with my own flesh and blood. Pressed, skin to skin, grated, mixed, blended, brought to ecstasy. In this dark, lips have eyes and eyes have teeth._

_They bite everywhere, everywhere ..._

_When I look at him, I see the heavens breaking above me. I see the ragged edges of the clouds, hear the crackling fire that gnaws at them. And I love it, I love **him**, carrying the chaos to me andspicing my cold._

_It givesme resurrection from the ashes._

_And is he not worth all the tears that I've been saving from day to day?_  
_Is he not worth all the blood, I would emphasize for him on wood, stone and earth?_  
_Is he not rewarding all the doubts he gives me and all the pain he takes away?_

_Theloneliness is a beast nesting in the furniture of my house since I can remember. It lives in the fabric of my clothes, in my satin bed linen, behind the shadows casting my eyelashes. He shoos it away with his words, his voice, his smile, which applies to me alone and I'll do the same with the monster I allow by no means, in contrast to the true monstrosity lurking in his depths._  
_I lock it away, let it go hungry, bring it to beg. It will not bother him as long as I'm here. My beast, however, is like an old love, a long withered violet that politely withdraws when it is not desired. I created it and taught it loneliness is a part of me, as it has become a part of Will, and he internalizes a rebellious temperament himself, so you can not blame his beast to fall in a same behavior. To be inferior in nothing._

_I have often drawn him, tried to banish his facade on paper through coal and feverish precision. To set up a monument without a funeral feast._  
_It will not succeed. How could it? I'm doomed to dishonor something perfect with imperfect tools._  
_How could I catch the gleam in his eyes? The hurricane in them that sweeps over a Pacific ocean without a name. How should I interpret the smoothness of his skin on the fingernail thin layer of mashed wood, with all its imperfections and its wonders._  
_And what about his voice? The sounds that I am able to wrest him? Noise can not be taken by the leadership of a quill nor removed with blotting strips._  
_Is it possible to erase silence? Can one dip the sound of a scream in color? These are idle thoughts and yet the attempt remains a useless attribute to the blemish of our half-baked skills._

_Nothing can do him justice. No one will undercut his value._  
_No one will ever know him, as I am able to know him and that's good. It is necessary._

_Heis so much more than I can take and so much less than I praise him. Maybe I'll never be able to define his beauty. Maybe I'll never want to._

_Maybe he's my life. Maybe I'm his death._  
_Then he is my morningstar, and I am his downfall. He is the sun in the evening coat. I am the horizon, in which he drowns burning hot. And if this is true, then he will be the vial, in which I fill my poison and die._

_The sickness will be my legacy to him. My delusion. His gift. It weighs in due time, when the opportunity arises. Themortal constant is restored forever._  
_It is a circle. A spiral. The band of two individuals who are one in their being and their destruction. We spoil each other, layer by layer, piece by piece, pulse by pulse._  
_We want to exist independently. But we can not leave each other alone._  
_I have sown addiction and he has watered the seeds with his curses. It's hard not to take a second bite of the fruit of knowledge, if the first has already been tasted and found to be divine. In our own, diffuse world there is no God. We do not need Him. We pray with knife and fork, with shackles and scars. We complement us. Complete us and yet we constantly bring ourselves in dispute, lacerate with words and deeds. Our suffering is the suffering of others, and we take it in stride._

_The similarity promotes wounds, but we wear it with pride, because we know who we are and belong to._

_But what if the construct becomes cracked?_  
_What if the tree rots on its roots and the buds wither before they can be picked?_

_I have considered many scenarios that could end in disaster. I keep control, I'm keeping it as ever, but sometimes even enough control can't take account of unforeseen incidents and mitigate their consequences._

_Another awful nice aspect of man: The circumstances of his environment are more unpredictable than his own psyche._

_The wine glass nestles pressed in my hands, the cherry red liquor curls at the minimal fluctuation. One drop on my tongue and the bouquet of cabernet, cedar and cassis impregnates my tongue. I would like to drizzle this wine over your face and bite it from your lips, darling, but you're not here._  
_You, my wonderful mate, soon my hubby, my bright counterpart do not sit at my table today and also yesterday, the place beside me was crowned with emptiness and the room wrapped itself in the silence of defeat._

_No one ever said it would be easy. This life. This love. The agonizingly slow suffocation of that love. The loss, you can not compensate with tears._  
_No one ever said it would be easy to lose what you have won once. To understand it. Recognize it._

_No one ever said it would be so hard not to give up._

_I never understood it to stand on the side of the fleeing crowds in battle. Not if the price of surrender is too high to move in a comfortable setting._

_Tell me, does heset you up, taking his trophy and lock it in his cabinet? Does he ogle with your polished porcelain façade every day, courting it, touching it ?_  
_All the work I invested, all the trouble I prepared myself for, all the kisses, the whimpering, the confessions that I have coaxed you and should only stay between you and me - shall he get them now and I remain kneeling in morass, weighted with dirt and wrung out, sprinkled with blood and filth like a whipped dog?_

_Does he deserve this? Does he deserve __**you**?_

_No._

_He is the snake that has crept into our paradise. Eden will fall. Our rings will rust. Our federal government will be desecrated._

_Should it come to this? Do you want that?_  
_Oh, you don't know what you do to me, when you look at me like this. When your gaze falls to the ground and you hardly dare to raise your head in my direction. So ignorant. So afflicted. Our time is limited, pretending on the meetings._  
_It's like before, like when we did not know each other and I was not more than a disagreeable stranger to you who put his needles carefully into your brain and stabbed, curious what nerve you would stir this time. It's like this routine again and yet not the same. It hurts. The pain is new and the tears, the tears that should not be cried, lie fresh and wet on my face._  
_You beg to me, ask me for answers that I can not give you, for things that I'm prohibited to tell you. I shall grant you no enlightenment. No quality. No relief._

_I can not even tell you that the man with whom you are sharing bed and stove at this moment is not the one which you have learned to love with an almost morbid fervor and let into your mind, your soul, your body._  
_I can not explain that it is not his arms, where you should rest every night, not his house, in which you should eat._  
_I can not tell you that you are mine and not his. You've never been supposed to be his until that fateful day ..._

_But you feel it. Feel this nagging doubt in you. This __**why**? You feel it sprout like weeds weaving an ivy blanket over your heart and your stomach._  
_It's a shame to cling to a hope, to imagine, to fear, but when there is nothing left, then only hope remains._  
_The hope that your storm draped ice will mingle with the fire in my iris hope that you feelest in the dark and I reach for your hands and send them away only until my grip you has peeled the meat from your bones._

_Butnow I have to wait._  
_Must keep track of how close you are lacing control your jacket around your bodyand the door closes behind you. I must watch you leave from my home, which was once **our** home. From a life that was once ours, too._

_Away from a love that sparked the grotesque in you and towards a love which celebrates lies into a mosaic._

_Oh, Amnesia. Today, I'm your wounded man ._  
_But for how long has this sting to sit in my flesh until you pull it out?_  
_How long? How long !?_

_My patience exhaustes day after day. And my wrath will soon prevail reason._

_As they took his sacred Patroclus from Achill, he slashed the Greek king's son Hector down to his heels, tied his body to a chariot and left him revolving around the tomb of his beloved friend for twelve days__. He brought the war the turning point and the Roman armies to victory over Troy. He floated a whole city in flames to atone for the theft of his love._

_Do you want this revenge, Frederick?_  
_Do you want your pale body adorning the roofs of your institution?_  
_Ipso it will be this way._

_Twelve days took Achill as deadline. Twelve weeks will be mine. Will has to decide. If the time limit expires, **I** will do it._

_Another sip of sweetened blood in a glass dress. The cost of your squashing bones between my teeth. My fingertips clutching in wild curls, while I put a bite of your spicy meat on his tongue._

_His enjoyment. My triumph. My dream._

_Twelve weeks, Frederick._  
_Twelve weeks until your death._  
_Twelve weeks until Patroclus and Achill come after Eden again, wrapping your intestines around their hips._

_Twelve weeks in_

_**Amnesia.**_


	3. Heart cry

_"When the heart cries, the mind is numb." _

_~Walter Ludin~_

* * *

The world had become deaf when Hannibal closed his ears from it.

He opened his eyes after he gently tilted the phone to the side and then laid it down on the smooth, cool surface of the kitchenette, embedded as a thorn injured rose on the breast of a warm corpse .

He pushed his eyelids open, stretched them into fully width circles of pupils. Painful. The jagged light of the flashes coming from the distant storm in the back of the house burned into his retina, leaving broken hatches behind in the white of his eyeballs and chose to spread few coral red veins with a bloody tinge. The vegetating, maroon iris dipped into the dark tone of dripping wet obsidian, inhuman cold and heat equally biased in it. One look, enough to melt bone and to etch down the cobwebs of a miserable child's soul. Hannibal loosened his grip on the phone and smelled the bitter nuance of the plastic case, as the cool goo stuck to his fingertips. Fingertips that usually clung to the scent of fine food and oriental occultic spices and salty bitter sea breeze. He felt the soft tapping of his skull, the need to put his hands under the faucet and turn up the water. And watch as the crystal clear glowing beam rained on his skin, similar to a vengeful concoction of God, as the continuous drops dug with metallic hardness in his flesh and tore it from his bones. Whitewashed him. He got caught in this self-proclaimed illusion like a protégé in the sheets of his tutor and he liked it, liked it, liked it far too much...

The faucet remained untouched. The smell of the plastic case on his fingers dried.

Seven minutes later, Hannibal was sitting in his Bentley and drove along the highway while the night stretched her cold bat wings across the sky and headlights of other cars flashed epileptic in the darkness. Hannibal looked ahead, saw the gravel road, the dreary gray of metal and concrete in addition to strong forest growth and scrub slopes. His attitude was very straight, his face rigid, notching the immovable mouth as in marble palisades. The only thing that distinguished him as 'alive', was the regular rise and fall of his chest and from time to time an incurred blink of his eyes. His bent down fingers left imprints on the steering wheel. If onelooked closely, one could easily see the vehemence with which the plaster white knuckles were trapped in the foam.

No tremor. No quake. No whimper. Absolute control.  
Hannibal was the calmness itself.

_Will ... car accident ... hospital ... come quickly ! _

The only words he had allowed to memorize in his thoughts. Jack Crawford had informed him on the phone. Why Jack Crawford? Why he and not anyone else? Why Jack? Hannibal drove into a curve and was almost cut off by a driver of less careful variety, but only noticed it on the edge of his conscious like a horse would have noticed a busily humming fly that crawled on its nostrils.  
The psychiatrist did not understand why this fact reminded him of an angry bite in the calf. A red light flashed in his face, his right foot brake pedal was routinely pressed down and he realized it, for realization was what always came too late and usually last. When the light switched to green again, he drove on.

Jack Crawford had known about Will's misfortune** before** him. Meaning Jack Crawford was still selected as emergency contact in the files and so Will's adressed caregiver, although Hannibal and he were engaged for one month now and should be married in a maximum of two months, in early spring. For people from outside that was probably a tiny, terribly insignificant detail, hardly to speak about and hardly worth the waste of a single breath pumped through the lungs.  
For Hannibal, this detail was essential. And it was still essential to him while he parked in front of the Baltimore State Hospital and headed to the entrance, electrically fanning glass wings opening as he slid through them. He was probably anxious to moderate the pace of of his steps by using the pulse rate his quiet heartbeat.  
But he forgot that he did not hear his heart, as he did not hear the frightened honking of cars when he had raced past them and the chalk-pitched scream the woman had uttered when he was driving on in a horrific pace despite red-rimmed traffic lights. But maybe he would remember it later and consider it as a missed opportunity. It had been rude of this woman to yell after him.

He heard nothing until the doors hooked behind him in their tracks, tasted the bouquet of disinfectant, watery wounds, pain and spilled salt in oxygen and saw Jack sitting on a bench in the waiting area of the hospital, elbows on clumsy knees and knuckles oppressively bent against the end.

_Will ... car accident ... hospital ... come quickly ! _

The only words he had allowed to memorize in his thoughts.

After that, the world had become deaf. And he with it.

* * *

Hannibal stretched his back and took a deep, slowly mastered breath. Listening to the monotonous pattern of his own blood pressure swelling in his veins urged his thoughts to peace.

The first signs of stress planted like twiners on his back, clinging to his muscles and tickled his ribs with careful penetrance. An irrefutable signal that, firstly, the waiting time that he had already spent here forcefully exhausted the patience of his physical overextension too much and secondly, that the quality of this chair was definitely kept in the milieu of cheaper furniture.  
Thoughtfully, but without greater interest, he let his stern gaze wander beyond the boundaries of the waiting area. He saw pale flattering coats and bustling people, extremely busy in the familiar yet foreign establishment. He remembered the time when he kept the profession of a successful surgeon. A carousel of images, similar to the grid of a dust-stained roll of film revolved in his mind. It seemed almost miraculous to him now how this system of uncoordinated shouting, tinny telephone systems, appealing calls, erring bodies, the headless talks from patient to patient, blood tests, CT's instructions, operations written on the board, should work. But it did. Maybe not as effective as it could be, but good enough to prevent a catastrophe. Hannibal took off his jacket, folded it with usual prestige and placed it as a pillow on his lap, tugging the wrinkles from the fabric, clapping his hands over it. He avoided to watch Jack on purpose, even grazing him with a single look would have implied a level of alertness that Hannibal was not willing to give at this moment. The FBI agent sat across from him on the bench, straight as an arrow, staring to the ground. His powerful, broad figure, the human rock not even a hurricane could have moved from his place, had already tried to start a sustained conversation with the psychiatrist before, but after a couple of unsuccessful approaches he had sunken in the silence of his personal misery. Hannibal was truly glad about this reaction. Although it was not in his nature to block his fellow men so rudely otherwise, but in his defense, the parameters of their situation offered not necessarily the stuff for a happy small talk. It would have been grotesque to even think of rubbing a smile on their mouthes in a place like this and circumstances such as these.

Hannibal glanced at his watch. Since his arrival, 46 minutes had passed. He had forgotten how tough time understood to last when it only got the opportunity to demonstrate its finality. A sad realization, as the psychiatrist thought and maybe he would have reveled in musical moods on the transience of life and the portrait of a Chesapeake Ripper corpse, covered with de-energized autumn leaves and bitten cherry stems hatched in coal yesterday, but yesterday was yesterday and today was now. And now, it was no day to feast on art. Now was a day - more a night than a day, if one thought about the state of the pointer on the baby-faced dial and the pearly black sky structure - to wait.

Wait. Wait ...

Waiting for death.

"Hannibal! "

He smelled Alana's perfume before he heard her voice, overloaded in panic. He raised his head, looked to the running woman. Her hair fluttered in sluggish waves of mezereon on her shoulder blades, shiny dark and soft and wet from the battalion of wind and hailstorm. A few ink-colored strands stuck to her picturesque red cheeks, her blue eyes covered in a deep-lashed sea of nervousness and the anxiety of being too late already. Raindrops clung to her crisp white jacket, jingling there like a glass bead game on the pure substance. The frantic clacking of her high heels echoed like drumbeats in his sensitive hearing and Hannibal wasn't able to judge whether her appearance pleased or annoyed him.

Earlier he had enjoyed every conversation and minute of her company, but since Will had come into his life, he had encountered an increasing distance. He still kept in touch with her, prepared his behavior as his food, refined and courteous. She would always be a polished ruby among his acquaintances, but the fact that his companion had earlier fallen in love with her (and maybe would do again if Hannibal would suddenly depart this life, something that he definitely not intended to do in the next few decades), he never forget and he brought it to speak as rarely as possible. It neither dressed his style to tear fresh wounds because of pure malice, nor did he unnecessarily poked in old scars. Therefore he had simply limited / minimized occasions with Alana Bloom and Will being in one room without his special observance. He'd prevent them to explore _their old affection again_, let it melt like a snowflake on dry wood, even before it was able to catch fire. But if this desired effect did not work Hannibal would use a more definitive output ... but he admitted that he was not too happy thinking about it, primarily because Alana's death was the death of a pleasant conversationalist and it would have cost him a satisfactory influence too - What appeared useful, he preserved as late as possible in his fridge.

He rose from his seat, as his education commanded him. She came to a stop a few feet away. Diamonds reflected in her suffering eyes, a suffering he kept strictly hidden himself behind his mask. He begrudged her for the option to wear all her feelings freely on her face.  
"How is he?" Her voice broke into syllable shards from her rose quartz lips, quiet and sad and perfect to intersect with sharp edges into the soul flesh of fellow men. To Hannibal, however, it only filed the fabric of his tie.

"He's undergoing an operation now." he told her dutifully. "That's all I know. I wanted to help, but the medical profession does not allow a surgeon to cut open patients who are close to him. The emotional stress and the fear of losing their loved ones by own failure, could reflect in damaged work-"

" - especially since it has been probably more than ten years that you hold a scalpel in your hand." A bright baritone added behind them, fed into a cold that made the windows rattle. Hannibal held still. His face remained in expressionless manifestation, but in thought his cloudy soul mixed with inky drops. He knew this voice very well, had it often loaded to his dinners and served a variety of dishes.**  
**Hannibal imagined to hear icecubs bounce in his blood against each other as he turned to the voice's source.

The figure of a middle aged man greeted his battered optic nerve. He tapped the lower end of his stick, he was constrained to carry with him since the tragic incident at the observatory, slowly to the ground. _Tock Tock Tock_. As the heart beats of a wilting flower in late autumn. "Finally, we don't want another disaster to happen..." he still announced, quoting his previous comment. The sarcasm faded lilacs from his tongue and his lips pointed oiled. They looked at each other. Hannibal was silent.

The silence ran down like flies on the plastered walls of the barren building. None of the three people moved. As if from a distance afar, Hannibal heard the sighing creaking of the chair, as Jack rose to his full size. His steps were like the regular echo of a golden gong ringing for meditation. He joined their side, so that the psychiatrist was flanked by human shields on both sides.  
"Dr. Chilton." Alana finally hissed, broke the silence that was only bridged by the sounds of the hospital's daily routine. The pure disgust crept like an uninvited guest from the back room of her heart and manifested itself on her beautiful face, brought it to glow in rahge. "What are **you** doing here anyway?".

"Why this spontaneous hostility, Dr. Bloom? Does it frighten you so much to think Will Graham could mean something to me, too? Incidentally, Dr. Lecter – " He turned directly into Hannibal's direction. A wan smile touched his mouth and shaved the chin underneath. "I couldn't express my congratulations to your engagement yet. I hope you may find our profiler in a condition that is still suitable for a happy wedding..."

"Don't say things like that." Alana interrupted him angrily. Her laboriously held, superficially draped control broke like the Titanic when it collided with the iceberg. Just as the fuselage cracks won and licked up the water through leaks, her lower lip wavered, trembled incessantly. Her eyes swam in an ocean of tears. "It's all bad enough without your suffocating gloomy theories." she said. Then the first tear ran down her left cheek. Hannibal handed her a handkerchief from his breast pocket. He said nothing. He knew far too well that we would probably now be expected to put an arm around the trembling woman or to donate a physically ambitious consolation otherwise, but he could not. For the first time since ever the ship of his mind sailed in a storm and his heart, poisoned with emotions, this disgustingly whimsy, strong throbbing organ held the wheel and yanked and dug its nails into the rotting wood and plowed algae under his skin.

Chilton officially seemed to spare no pity for her. His face framed in stoic coolness. Hannibal was not too happy, but somehow he envied the psychiatrist for it. Yes, for the volatile limit blink of an eye, he really felt envious. What a strange feeling.

"I'm just realistic." he replied dryly, winked at Hannibal. "Right, Dr. Lecter? Prior to your psychological career you were working as a surgeon, so what kind of damage are we looking forward to? Share your prognosis with us."

Hannibal's lips incarnated into a pencil thin line.

"Each case is unique as Will's brain structure is that gives him his high-resolutionary empathy. I can give you no information about any damages, nor decorate the actual seriousness of the situation with air cocoons. It would be better to wait and hope for the best, rather than indulge in illusions."  
Chilton's mouth sagged derogatorily.  
"So you are just as clueless as we all are. Disappointing. I had expected more from you." he judged nasally.  
Alana's eyes, still silently thanking for using the cloth, lay in wait above the fabric, now monstrously outraged. Her iris sizzled in blue charcoal.  
Jack put his mahogany brown paw on her petite shoulder, before she could even dare the attempt to jump on Chilton's throat.

"Calm down, Alana." he said imploringly and cleared his throat, drawing from the Canyon of his breathing lungs. The timbre in his dark eyes preached the verse of Agnus Dei. "Grief has many faces. Concern has even more."

Hannibal watched instinctively at the hardly noticeable, weighed-like change that peeled over Jack's warm stone face at these words. The word _Bella_ was written all over his cheeks and forehead, therefore he probably knew what he was talking about.  
Then he turned his attention back to Alana. He also couldn't bear a verbal altercation between the two psychiatrists currently. "Alana, would you please bring us some coffee? I've seen an automatic just round the corner." he asked, casting a cold glance to Chilton. "I believe, Frederick could tolerate a hot drink too. To calm down."

Chilton merely snorted. "No need." he spat, sullenly stumbling aside and walking a few steps, went the same path back then, piece by piece, rhythmically accompanied by the impact of his stick, not paying attention to the others anymore as if their presence had dissolved in airborne particles. _Tock Tock Tock_ wailed the floor. Alana was confused first, but then she went without a word, following the desired request. Despite that her reluctance was only too clearly paved around her questioning eyes. (But she had to recognize the logic, because she was shaking herself, not only from overwhelmed weeping, but also from external cold.) She moved down the hallway and disappeared around the next corner.  
**  
**Hannibal felt disguised relief, centered himself entirely to Chilton whose gestures bothered him. He thought that Gideon's previous treatment (only a few months) occurred pain for any movement the psychiatrist took and he wondered why he published this senseless sequence still, although it would have been simple to sit on a chair and wait. When he saw Chilton completing this procedure a third time, he realized that this man accepted the pain voluntarily. That he did not want it in that moment, but needed it nevertheless. Pain meant function. Pain meant life. Pain shooed away powerlessness. The knowledge, moreover, to be able to feel pain, created the illusion that they one was still able to make a difference, even when the situation seemed hopeless. The haggard framework and the dependence of other individuals was painfully real though.

Even Hannibal was currently succumbed to this pattern and he hated it, hated to be on that side. He did not like to see his control slipped away, he did not like to swim in uncertainty until his feet would finally find something solid, wrap greedily around it and pull, gasping for oxygen. Perceiving the world as a washed-out, dull scheme.  
Curiously enoughhe understoodChilton'smisery, becauseitwas also his own, buthe avoidedit to offerthismaneven oneounce ofunderstanding. This person wasnot his friend, not hiscrony, nothispotential ally. Not anymore,since the eveningof thatopera, after MoniqueBorelli'sglorious voicehad put histrue intentionstowards his fiancé. Hannibalfelt thefeeling ofjealousynotin a natural way,not like most peopleused tofeel it, but he wasquitecapable of tasting a bile taste on his tongue when he noticed that someone got hold of his laboriously selected property.

This. The foreign arm around Will's waist, tightly directing him to another body. The curls drowned in rain, painted on moon white temples, the feverish expression in icy blue eyes, shattered the dark crevice of a pair of shattered lips, the bleeding, excited tone of sensitive skin. The patter on marble railing and smooth floor panels, the screaming thunder over their heads, the fury in the eye of the storm, bathing every minute in pale light. Frederick Chilton's face, internalizing a very different dissonance behind the mask of arrogance.

Envy.

Hannibal was not paranoid, but this scene's impressions haunted him still. It had reminded him of a divine warning. A threat. A memorial. A punctured intestine.

"Excuse me? Are you Mr. Graham's relatives?"

Hannibal whirled around, alarmed. The voice was familiar to him. It belonged to the woman who should assist the responsible surgeon at Will's operation. Her stature was petite, almost boyish, but the strictly French braided bun in her mouse brown hair mocked her young age. Slightly over the age of twenty, but with the intention to prove herself despite her inexperience. Hardworking, perhaps stubborn. But the woman's attitude cared Hannibal at this moment very little as long as it helped to steady Will's pulse.

"We are responsible for him." Jack answered before Hannibal could formulate its own response and secretly he sent a mental kitchen knife through the agent's aorta to punish the rude intervention. _A murder in thoughts saves a trip to the psychiatrist_ it dropped to him abruptly, and some puny, dark barricade in his brain indulged his inner voice in high, campy laughter and the sound corrupted his ears. He swallowed. In this case, it was already queasy enough. The wait had a bitter restlessness roused in him and now it seeked to rise to the surface, but he stopped it, hid it behind his veil of gray and voluminous recapitulation.  
"I'm his fiance." he said, letting the syllables roll like caramel marbles in his mouth before they jumped off the tongue. And he hoped that Chilton heard it and that it strangled his throat.  
He watched the woman with a gentle, but subliminally strict view. She tried to resist him, but after four seconds she declined nervously and gave answer:

"The operation went well." she said. "We've found a brain haemorrhage, but stopped it quickly. He seems to have worn neither a head injury nor other damages. A few contused ribs and bruises, but nothing seems alarming. We keep him for observation overnight. Pure precaution." She gave them a thin smile. Her face was without makeup and the dark circles under her eyelids stung out like the empty holes of a skull. "You may consider yourself happy."  
"I would be even happier if this dramatic accident had not happened at all." Hannibal told her politely. His jaw hardened. "Can you please tell me whom I have to _thank_ for this?"**  
**At first it seemed as the assistant doctor wanted to ignore, but changed her mind then. (Why? Perhaps because this older man summoned a so engaging, no protest commanding aura that she did not dare to talk back, or worse, to have no words at all.)  
"Mr. Dolarhyde has suffered internal bleeding and a broken leg. He also complains about horrible lasting migraine, but we couldn't find it's cause yet. He will survive, too." she added and bit shortly after on her lower lip like a school girl who had divulged the secret of her best friend to the most notorious clique of the entire school by mistake.  
Hannibal smiled friendly, severity hardly disappearing in his eyes. It was her reward.

"Alright. May I now visit my fiance?"

"Uh- he still sleeps -effect of the anesthesia. I don't think you'll find him awake." she said doubtfully.

Hannibal felt the increasing discomfort creeping over her. He smelled it. A mixture of spicy sweat on forehead and armpits, an acidic contour of adrenaline-fired fear and the distinctive smoky touch of panic. Jack noticed it too, because the psychiatrist felt how his suspicious onyx gaze sat on his back. Alana was caught too much in the swirling morass of her own Feelings to perceive the change in the behavior of the other woman and to draw conclusions on her own. Chilton stood somewhat apart from them, denied from a more intensive screening.  
Nevertheless, Hannibal took no chances. He had to end this conversation quickly.

"This is not of importance." he explained. "It suffices me to see him, and he will probably be happy to wake up and greet my familiar face."

The young woman seemed torn. Her frogspawn green eyes flickered around, fixed point to point, but never tangled voluntarily in the psychiatrist's field of view.

"Well ... yes, but even-"

"Which room number? " Hannibal interrupted her, and he did it with the warmest smile humanity could offer.

"66, but Mister, I really don't thi-"

"Then everything is fine." Hannibal cut her off. Neat and clean. Without unnecessary pain. He had learned to lead the scalpel this way. He sewed an expression of goodness in his facial features. "Thanks for your help. Your support has saved my dearest. One day you will certainly be a great doctor, and I don't judge you here not as an amateur, but as a former surgeon."

The compliment had the desired effect. Her cheeks flushed immediately like plump peaches kissed by a sluggish spring sun. She stammered a _Th-Th-Thank you_, turned on her heel and staggered back into her more professional home range.

While that she tumbled a litte, as she would fight to shake off the aftermath of a hypnotic trance.

Hannibal stared after her without really looking at her, saw through the shape of her body. In ten minutes he would have forgotten her. She was inconspicuous, unimportant. Expanded to incarnate average. Hannibal served no average feast on his table. It would have included the danger to bore him.

He thought of Will ...

_The operation went well._

How dusty it had sounded from her mouth. Like a vile bagatelle. A farce, a mockery even.

_"Tear off the masks, we want to see what rots underneath!" _

And the Headless Horseman gave them a hollow laugh, ripped the hat pulled over his forehead from the remote host, allowing all guests with strong bent pride to admire the tar black hole that was decorated gleefully with his snow-white neck ruff.

"This side of you is new to me, Dr. Lecter.¨ said the agent beside him and Hannibal tasted a hint of frowning abstinence in the sonorous bass, as it smoked in his ear. He turned his head, his eyes a single conjugation of _being._

"We rarely know what ferments within us, before the occasion compels us to carry it into the sun.¨ He made a melancholy sigh. The shell,which walled his true nature, acted obviously ashamed. "I'm not proud of it, but if I seek after a specific information, I can be very persuasive, Jack. Especially if it comes to Will." In his thoughts he dabbed the last name with honey leaves. Sticky sweet, but rough, freshly seasoned by the downpour of days gone by ...

Jack straightened his back, pushed the collar of his dark wool coat a bit tighter around his neck.

"Indeed." he said. "It's ... a small miracle after all. If you consider that the car rotated three times before it finally came to a diagonal stop. Just a few bruises, not even broken bones. Incredible."  
Hannibal mused that his opponent thought of his wife again and the arid life thread on which her existence clung. He smiled.

"Interpret it as guardian angel to go? I wouldn't have taken you for a spiritual visionary ."

Jack shrugged his massive mountain shoulders.

"God moves in misterious ways."

"Will has never proved guilty towards God." Hannibal did rotate his view, perceiving the people around them vaguely. Everyone seemed to be hurt in their own interpretation. "So why did He sent him a careless man like Dolarhyde? ¨

The agent smiled a bit.

"I think this is more in the profession of the devil, Hannibal.¨

"Even the Fallen one respects innocence." he said, barely making the effort to shake his head in additional denial.

Jack just opened his mouth to retort when the metallic growl of sliding doors spread before them and three overly familiar figures went in. A young woman walked forward, while two older men were involved in a stimulating conversation directly behind her. Diversely chattering they discovered Crawford and Hannibal in less than two minutes, as they would possess eagle eyes. They came up to them.  
In unison, Jack promoted a strangled groan from his lips.

"Oh my, the cavalry is arriving." he grumbled. "And the Valkyrie pulls her two courting chariot horses behind her without any mercy."

Hannibal stayed neutral.

"I am pleased that Will enjoys a higher popularity than he would have expect himself.¨ he said, leaned slightly forward. Confidential. "Nevertheless, it would be better to pay him an individual visit first. What do you think?"

"Oh, I agree. He needs some rest." Jack nodded to the psychiatrist. Transferred him his charge. An urge for protection, as Hannibal had assumed for quite some time now.

"Go to Will. I'll explain it to Alana and the rest of my team."

Well, that was something Hannibal didn't have to be told twice.

"Thank you." he said, and left. Left the place, left Jack and his forensic science colleagues that would assail him with questions before the agent could manage to open his mouth shooing and barking them to calm down. He left Frederick Chilton, who he now officially considered as troublemaker and expendable comrade. Perhaps even as rival, but it took more grotesque situations than a waltz to see a genuine, serious threat in him. He could still hear the echoing noise of Alana's clicking shoes on his left side, as she hurried back to the waiting area, holding several cups with hot steaming liquid in her hands. Yes, he left them all. Though their concern for Will was real, their grief and their tears, he didn't care.  
He did not like to take risks. He hated to wait. Especially if it was Will Graham with the Poseidon blue gemstone ring on his left hand who clearly represented the most imposing, most vibrant risk of his entire life.  
Only he was allowed to receive it with joy. With pleasure. With greed. Because the price was too precious. Because he felt it was a waste that one day this man should belong to another, inferior individual.  
Because he had chosen Will. And Will had ultimately chosen **him**.

_Thank you_

Hannibal crossed the bland corridors like a murdered spirit ghosting through yellowed living rooms, ignoring the nurses and preservationists making their way in opposite directions. Once one bumped into him, mumbling a rough apology before moving on. Paradoxically, he found the ignorance in this case quite pleasant.  
His senses were circling like vultures in metallic smelling carrion.

_Thank you._  
Rarely had he been so honest with this word, such as in today's night. Although it was confusing even to himself, whom he _really_ thanked.

But the better he knew, who he would put on his black list. It had been extremely rude of Mr. Dolarhyde to bother Will's health with an car accident and chasing him out of the traffic of life in a most literal sense. The profiler had been driven home from work. Hannibal had prepared dinner at that time. Cooked lobster with green asparagus and coconut milk, a delicacy from Sylt (Will still harbored a subtle distaste for food that included human flesh, which Hannibal wanted to cast away, at least after their wedding). He had the vital shaking shellfish just pressed into the hungry seething pot when the phone rang and he had innocently wiped his hands on a dish towel before picking up the phone.  
Since then the lobster swam as ever as provisional bloated corpse on the fluctuating levels of the pot. Dead, but intact and inedible. A horrible waste.  
At this thought Hannibal remembered to his own annoyance that he had not asked the assistant doctor after Dolarhyde's room number, too. But he would find out soon eitherway. He was trained to locate sites, appropriate times and circumstances for creating his design. So no reason to steer someone into a quiet room and pull the skin from his or her flesh. Though ...

Hannibal had reached his goal. Room 66. A third number and the psychiatrist had deemed the election as satanic humor. The door was closed. His hand wrapped around the copper-colored knob. It was desert dry.  
He took a deep breath, feeling the oxygen stroking his larynx with a tart coolness and filled his lungs.  
Then he opened the door and everything sat down on the wheels of tragedy's fate.

* * *

The inhuman beeping crawling like a chain through the air was the only source of noise in the whole room, as Hannibal entered and closed the door behind him. His gaze slid across the room, covered by skeleton colored light that was sent from flickering tube lights on the ceiling. On a monitor, the pulse frequency was displayed. The accurately drawn lines smeared in form of foliage green mountains and valleys in the dull, dark swamp of screen and it almost reminded him of the painting skills of children fingers, whose imagination was coined beyond life and death yet. Finally, he embedded his attention to the man he had risen in his Bentley for.

Will's skin shone like fluorescent wax. His curls pressed dull and flat on his moth-bluish temples. Scratches nested in flowing color palettes, wandered over his face, neck and the front of his heaving rib cage. His bare arms, crouching limp and lifeless on the bed sheet, were reminiscent of a fine-lined labyrinth that had been drawn with the tip of looped scissors. Probably caused by glass splinters of the bursting windshield while gravitation had turned around the car several times. His pelvis was hidden under a blanket. Hannibal was silent. He compared Will with a rag doll but felt a forbidden majesty in this production. A morbid longing that he could not put into syllables.

_Disease and life_, he thought. _Health and death, what is the difference? Is not all anchored in the same universe? Does not everything serve the same destruction?_  
Hannibal saw art in the sadism of modernity as well as in the nostalgic decapitation of the Middle Ages. For him, murder was considered to be a form of expression and creativity and perversion he often translated with the freedom of the human will. He was driven nature of a man dubbed the ugliness with gloss and chastity rather than looked at many occasion as an obstacle as a virtue.

And in this moment, this small duration of a heart cry as Will's mouth gently cringed in anesthetized sleep and his breath flew audible in the atmosphere, such a tender feeling swelled in his chest that it almost brought him to lose his composure. It flooded his veins so intense, so full and awful that he felt an ailing chirping in his calves and he had to sit down on the chair standing invitingly next to the bed. Will's right hand rested only a few centimeters away from him. He leaned forward, took it in his. His lips thinned out. Wills skin was as cold as the frost flowers painted on their windows in late winter. He kept the hand, warmed it with his own pulse and flesh.  
The tip of his thumb stroked gently over the knuckles of the profiler. Protectively. Devastating. Like porcelain.

_This teacup is not broken. Not yet. _

Will bowed his head forebodingly in his direction, caught in sensation and medicamentous coma. He breathed steadily. He lived. He did not wake up.  
Hannibal stayed for a certain period of time in this position and observed his actions. Then he leaned back until the beechwood knocked against his shoulder blades, took one journal, provided by the hospital, from the nightstand, flipped it without special interest and waited. He would not sleep this night. Would watch over the profiler, unlike that guardian angel mentioned by Jack, who had missed this part in shame. Hoping in the creaching dawn everything would be as it had been before. That nothing had changed and Will opened his eyelids and the same, lost, even tortured affection in his ocean eyes spoke to him as it had become a tantalizing beautiful habit for Hannibal.

He waited.

But his hope turned out to be in vain.

* * *

_And as I see you standing there_

_With bloodstained hands and messed up hair_

_Let me watch as you arise_

_Let me praise your lost disguise_

_Let me help your drained tears dry_

_Before you leave without goodbye_

_~A few verses by me~_

* * *

_Hello my dears!_

_I'm so sorry that it took so long but finally I've translated the first chapter and I hope you liked it^^_

_Thank you very much for all your comments, faves and follows. I'm very happy that some people have gained interest for this story :3_

_Well, well, what will happen next? I think you'll have to read the next chapter to find out^^_

_What do you think about the behaviour of Chilton/Alana/Jack/Hannibal ? Were their characters okay? Please tell me!_

_And ... do you remember the name *Dolarhyde* from somewhere else? I've got a tendency for mixing in my plots X'P_


	4. Echo skin

_A wind is blowing! The green lights_  
_ Sing extinguished - large and satiated_  
_ The moon fulfils the high hall,_  
_ Where no more celebrations sound through._  
_ The ancestral portraits quietly smile_  
_ And far-off - their last shadow fell,_  
_ The room is sultry with putrefaction,_  
_ Arround which ravens mutely move in circles._  
_ A lost sense of past times_  
_ Looks from the stony masks,_  
_ Pain distorted and empty of existence_  
_ Mourning in abandonments._  
_ Sick smells of sunken gardens_  
_ Quietly caress the decay -_  
_ Like the echo of sobbing words_  
_ Quivering over open crypts._

_**~ Georg Trakl, Decay **_

* * *

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine  
You make me happy_

Light and shadow in the mist of solid presence. Blinking, twitching, crackle, pinch. A burning smell in his nose.  
The world in motion. The world frozen. The world splintered?  
No.  
Will is the one who splinters. Who breaks. And falls. And falls. And ...

His fingers sweat and have the temperature of giant glaciers while they clutch the steering wheel like a vice. His feet find neither brake nor gas pedal.

_Where am I?_

_When skies are gray_

He winks. The breath knocks back on him, there, in the backbone of his throat. It feels sore, as if he had shouted. Roared from the ground of his trembling chest like a grenade that accidentally ignited in a secret hideout.  
Has he? Did he scream? In panic? Out of fear? With rage?  
Will does not remember.  
A shade of coal and mud cold blood draws his palate. Furry coats his teeth and feels like hedgehog bristles when he fumbles with the tip of his tongue over it. It all tastes like rotting stone and brass and he thinks of death. He too often thinks about death to be honest.  
Johnny Cash sings his song, bangs it, babbles it as in mockery, accusing the flag of alcohol. He sounds cheerful, but also so sad sad _sad_. It constricts Will's chest, strangles his lung, wriggles out the air like a salmon swarm in spring.

_What happens here?_

His environment is expressed as a cotton ball dipped in chloroform, dull and bitter sharp. Sounds jump out of the abstinent dark like bat wings. Screeching tires. Pig squealing. The fire iris of two headlamps, throwing themselves at him and scratch the paint of his car.  
Everything blurres, corners and edges are sanded down and run down on his retina like butanoic acid. It etches, but he does not dare to close his eyelids. A space-devouring painting with tangled lines of oil and ink envelopes him, surrounds him with arms of dust and shadows and they press, press on him. He's never been a great connoisseur and he finds no purity in this morbid mess. He hates it. Nausea kicks over him like an unhappy built tarpaulin and he gets tangled up in it, gasping for oxygen that seems to be replaced by a spongy filter sea of uncertainty. It stares at him from stupid, frameless eyes. So incredibly stupid that he feels the need to lash out at something. Or at someone. Wishing to be not upset anymore. To be never raged again ...

_Are these my thoughts? My aggression? Or does it belong to someone else ..._

Are you a thief, Mr. Graham? Are you a pathetic, puny robber? Do you steal identities?

How can you punish someone for something, what is the penalty in person? How can you lock up someone whose cage is his brain? His own prisoner?

A fine echo skin covers his flesh like lilac flowers branching through thin veins. He feels, sees, smells, hears, tastes, spits and indebted blames anything but himself.

_You'll never know, dear  
How much I loved you_

Will I die? Or am I dead already?

Will anyone miss me?

_'Please don't take my sunshine away'_

No reply. A moan goes through the slithering car when he turns over the first time. Will hears it as from afar. Hollow and tinny. A perfect pirouette in ballet. The performance of the dying swan in the mechanical industry. Different output, same tragedy. The blood is the same too, the color red and fresh. No copy, no nakedness. All original. Will listens to the viscous drops that swell from his cut below his left cheekbone, pushing hot on his chin. It smells of graveyard dirt. He does not know when exactly he has gained this injury. He currently knows very little at all.

The car turns a second time. Will rotates with it.  
The strap of his seat hooks like cast iron in his shoulder.

_'Please don't take my sunshine away'_

_Turn it off. Switch the damn radio off!_

He wants to grab the radio while he's still in flight, presence of mind palpating the button, but the weightlessness doesn't grant him relief. There is an undertow and he's stuck on it, helpless and fragile. Powerless.

The car rotates a third time. There is a bang, a final cry. The grinding squeal is bump-ligand metal. In his imagination he arranges his rib fragments like dominos.

Then the car is standing still. It leans on the left side of a grass hill and fluctuates like a ship wreck that has run against a sharp jagged reef that slashed the shiny boat belly. Will remains, trapped in steel, glass and fabric. It is a miracle he hasn't broken any of his bones. Fault lines adorn the transparent surface, but no shards have freed and hurt him. Will's pulse plays Spanish harpsichord. Interracial and desolate. His harsh breath clacks like castanets to the beat of his heart.

His body is numb, but intact, the injected adrenaline doesn't allow him pain. He trembles without realizing it.  
He is defying terribly miserable.

He thinks of a mother he never knew. Only from the stories of his father.

_"You have her eyes, buddy. Her eyes ... you resemble her so much."_

Even in his memory the words taste of gin and a broken heart.

_Please don't take_

My sunshine

Awa -

And finally, FINALLY, the radio is silent though it still chokes out a humming from the racked boxes.  
Will can not be pleased.  
A jolt surprises him and grabs him with imaginary hands on his curled hair, throwing him forward with delicious brutality. His nose hits the steering wheel. A cracking, as if a bee breaks its leg. Blood shoots out, paints his lips, his chin and the collar of his jacket.

He feels nothing still. Only that a warm and wet liquid clings to his neck_. Somehow comforting._

For the first time in his life, he wonders if there is a heaven. That there may be a hell, he already knows. He hopes it since the age of ten when he felt that his neighbor had his wife pushed down the stairs.  
_  
He loved to hear her whimper. Loved it so much…_

He raises the moaning droning skull when he hears a noise in front of him. An uneaten crunch as if someone chewed on bones.  
He sees a figure in the fog. Tall, slim, dark. Antlers growing from its temples. It stares at him, red, pupil-less eyes.  
A gargoyle? A fury? An angel? Will has forgotten the difference. Has shaken it from the pulpy mass of his brain, like much else. Important components, gears, screws, nuts, swivel cords. He falls apart like a carelessly stacked dish tower.

He sees the being move closer to himself. Supple, predatory. Its hands are made of sharpened knife claws, its feet are hooves, reminiscent of that of a deer. It is as black as a moonless night and it is naked. Will takes a rattling breath.

Will it come to get him? Attracted by the noise and the smell of salty sweat and easy prey? Does it want to collect him and pull a few chunks of meat out of his body, tumbling noisily on the floor? Will it eat him up alive or mercifully cut his throat with a bite before it begins his meal?  
Has the Grim Reaper sent his friend, _the Boogeyman_ today to take care of his whereabouts?

Will doesn't know. Even if, he is not able to escape. How could he? He can hardly move. Not even a straightening is allowed and he can't open the car door for the rest of the left side entombed in pounded earth.  
The being is only five feet away from him. Then four. Then three. Two. One ...  
It stops in front of him, goes into a crouch. Their eyes meet, melt into each other. On Will's arms tingles fear. The being is a monster. It's evil, though he particularly intends to blur the boundaries of such termina, heroes and villains. This is one aspect of his gift. His curse. It smolders in his blood.  
He observes with horror as every fiber of his body tenses, when a clawed fist clenches and flies down in his direction.  
He closes his eyes and expects the end.  
His last thought belongs to a man whose name he has forgotten and doesn't know why.  
And a final question.

_Will he weep for me? I've never seen him weep bef-_

Then the raw crash of a shattering windshield dominates his senses and he is blinded by a loud, bloody and humid darkness.

As the paramedics carry him out of the crushed car, he has lost consciousness long since. They transport him on a stretcher, limp and flatly breathing and cheesy white. He does not wake up. For a few hours he does not need to.

And when he wakes up, he'll soon wish not to have awoken at all.

His **echo skin** screams.

* * *

Will awoke by the sonorous fibrillation of cheap tube lights. Wearily, he blinked through his eyelids, still sticky from bleached tears. The world of the living opened their doors to him in the form of a clinically white paneled shrine. Featureless his eyes looked at a flat, bare ceiling above his head. The lamp, which light had penetrated his senses, shines angrily in his corona. Quickly he looks somewhere else.

_Where am I?_

His gaze wandered insidiously, saw empty walls and a leather couch with cream-colored fabric. He met a window that made him think of a cartoon from wooden poles and twine, he had saw in a morning newspaper with declining interest.

Which morning was it? What's the date?  
... What's the date **today**?

His ears opened. He perceived busy steps from an opposite corridor, hissing and pickling of foreign voices. The rhythmic beeping of electrical equipment. The choppy roles of smaller wheels, as a cart with colorful medicine jars and a plastic plate covering hot steaming meals was pushed on the course. Will caught a fleeting blink of a young woman in a pearl pink smock dress that billowed gently around her hips and waist.  
A little reassured, Will slumped deeper into the pillow and breathed in deep and long.  
So he was not alone. All right. This meant here were people who would enlighten him about everything when he asked nicely. Among other things, why he was stuck in this bed and why his body ached as a bull would have taken him up on the horns, and why he was partly bandaged like a pharaoh's mummy. And at last who this man wasthat sat a few inches away from him on a chair, a magazine about naturopathy in his lap and apparently dozed off ...  
And behind his back leaned, seemingly bored, the pitch-black deer figure that Will had crowned as his greedy drooling killer shortly before his exhaustion took him over.

Will's heart put up such a rapid rate that he almost thought he heard the _Klong_ that was caused by the collision against his breathless ribs. Any sudden movement caused a storm of hail ants from their caves, they bit into his nerves and nibbled at them with bitterly evil desire. His heart was beating frantically at the back of his throat now.

_Not you. Everything, everyone, but not you!_

Fanning its withered breath of life against narrowly opened, dusty dry lips, the deer monster watched him, almost sweetly embedding a dangerous paw on the shoulder of the stranger, whose head was tilted slightly to the side in sleep. Dense, ash-blond strands of his hair splayed over his forehead.

_Like the turned out embryonic membrane of a twin soul ... with claws_.

Will had never seen this man in his life and wondered what he was doing here. Keep guard about him? This thought was strange to the profiler, ridiculous, but not invariably absurd. He had obviously been injured, interpreting his wounded, plastered appearance and the plug in his forearm resulting resulted in a plastic bag with liquid and apparently diverted into his blood directly. Although he was not sure what, or perhaps better **who** had bequeathed him this condition, Jack would make sure that he'd be safe now, ready to rest and gain new strength so he could roam at crime scenes again and spit out new information. Like a tin soldier, settled on the flat wooden banquet, amazed by how many steps he could take, he, the skinny doll the skinny doll. Walking so long until he tipped over and played dead man.

He looked at the stranger from a seemingly safe distance. And now, as his mind finally girded in a tense calmness, he was able to realize that the man offered an impressively inhuman facade. Inhuman in the sense of - not from this world.  
As a precaution, he forced himself to study the stranger's appearance in detail.  
The man was tall and broad-shouldered. The profile was significantly cut, impregnating a touch of majesty but also wilderness, the flesh held a walnut wood color, the skin of his cheeks was carved with precarious cheekbones. The head shape almost square, coarse and flowing, rough and gentle in one (Will knew no right expression to describe how he actually felt - he could not decide and rather chose everything). He wore a suit made of woven kerosene wool. A crow perched black tie tied around his neck, entwined with a crisp white collar. The long legs ended in dark leather shoes.  
Will thought of Rome and the statues of carved stone that still stood there in the temples populated by gawking tourists. Their majesty had never aged despite the crumbling tooth of time. Hallowed likenesses of gods and heroes from legends and mythological tales.  
A sculpture.  
Yes, the face of the stranger resembled a sculpture's. According to the body, he let his mind wander vaguely. The fabric veiled the most and maybe that was a good/bad thing.

Will took a rattling breathing. At that moment, his opponent opened his eyes and looked at him directly.

The sudden contact caught him like a thunderbolt. Calm burgundy brown looked at him, linked with his point of view, it came to pass, and held it firmly. Will believed feel choking fingertips at his throat felt, but it did not make him turn away. The vortex into which he fell was pure fire and he burned. He was captured, crucified. Cursed.

They were silent. The duration was unlimited, lacked any measure.

The stranger bowed his head in greeting, barely a nod, barely a movement. Interrogative? Nervous? Even shy?

He smiled.

It was as if the evening sun rose over the snow-tipped Alp tops.

But the deer monster smiled too, and its dreary, obscene mouth pierced with a round circulated thicket of pale, blood bathed fangs. _His_ blood.

At that moment, something broke in Wills heart, perhaps forever. And he did not know why. He did not ... he just felt an intense, heady wave, a pain of loss that rolled like the pebbles under his skin and it elicited a whimper. A puppy that was pulled away too rapidly from the milk dripping teat of its mother and rebelled kicking and whining.

Will felt suddenly rarely empty. Hollowed. As they had removed him an organ. Or more. Or ripping the acid mantle of his salty skin.

_Who the hell __**is**__ that !?  
_  
"Will?"

A baritone, like chimney warm velvet beneath his fingertips, washed with a dark, melodic accent over him like a clarifying flood, tore him from his pain, his thoughts, even from the murder being. For a few benevolent seconds.

_He knows my name._

_Why is the sound of his voice so familiar to me...? I hear it for the first time._

_It is beautiful ... (?)_

But how could he recognize this voice while the speaker was unknown to him?  
The man, however, spoke more calmly.

"You woke up. Wonderful. How do you feel?" He sounded relieved, encased by boundless sympathy.

Will was silent. He wanted to look at the man again, only look at him, but his eyes remained mesmerized of following the monster how it moved its hand from the vital shoulder and instead led to its own face thar looked more like an anonymous Phantom of the Opera. It bent his bony index finger, pushed it to the thin marble lips, incorporated in gloomy shadows.

_Psst_the gesture said and Will's heartbeat quickened_. Psst._ _You have to be quiet now._

Will said nothing. He was paralyzed. His blood poured in winter cool streams through its rigid cores.

The essence nodded vaguely, but benevolent. Delighted.

_Good boy._

Will shook himself. A tremor seized him, making him tremble like a young aspen.

"Will?"

The sudden urgency bathed in his name forced him to be confronted with the stranger's attention again. What he met while raising his gaze was the face that would have fit more in the gold masked angle of a pharaoh tomb than in the unfriendly lit premises of modern medicine.

"Is everything all right? Do you have migraines? Are you in pain? Shall I set the morphine higher?"

Will was very surprised that the stranger brought such care in his questions. Warmth. Exuberant yet real. He did not know him ... right? The profiler thought feverishly.

...

-No.

He had never met him before, not outside this room. Never.

There was no connection.

"Why are you here, Mister?" His voice sounded mechanical. He saved the greeting phrases.

The stranger paused, if only by a hair. He held both face as well as body under iron control.

"Mister?" He raised a delicate eyebrow. "But Will, we've already stored this form of address -..." The baritone wove itself in barely ensnared irritation, feeling as welcome as the acidic sweat bead that climbed down Will's neck.

"I think I would remember that." he snorted indignantly, trying to support and raise himself up on his forearms. A cacaphony of stitches exploded under his flesh as the watering smoky firecrackers of a Chinese fireworks festival. Will gasped for breath in horror, but it seemed as if someone had squeezed every ounce of oxygen from the ambient. His eyes threatened to roll back into his head and his breath grew heavier. The pain was overwhelming, let stars burst in his brain and dance on stage like ceramic dolls.

In less than two seconds he felt a strong, almost unbearably hot hand close around his own wrist. The long fingers pressed like lava in his flesh. At the same time the cold breath of a second existence stroke his lower leg, hidden under the blanket.

He responded quickly. Proposed the uninvited hand away as if it was poison or a snapping bear trap.

"Don't touch me!" he hissed and would he have been an animal, he would have spewed out a warning growl. "Go. Whoever you are, a renegade reporter, one of Lounds' sycophants or an FBI guy I don't give a fuck. I don't want to speak with anyone except my fiance."

The dark Iris sharpened due to the crude rejection. Almost shocked. Or was it even a terrible knowledge that seeped in like water?

"Will, I **am** –"

"If you really want to help me, call Frederick." Will stopped him coldly. The agony and the realization that it had to be alleviated by medication, cut his voice more gruff voice than intended. "My fiance, his name is Frederick Chilton. I guess the name should be known by you, if you work under Jack's regime."

The stranger stood there as roots had dug out of his shoe soles and rammed deep and strong into the ground. A ship with no wind in the sails. Will felt dismay that shimmered like an own, untamed aura around his opponent, but he could not place, why it clung to him so badly. If he was honest with himself, he also didn't care too much at that moment.  
He was in pain, the inner life of his skull thundered and his mind was plagued with a form of disorientation he had never met before in such pure, _pure_essence. It was strange, insulting, as one waded through clouds of sugar with the unerring knowledge that a throw of King cobras lurked under the shiny powder, capable to dive out of the snow coloured sand and to wedge their finger thick fangs into his leg at any time, until he went to his knees and they attacked him from all sides.

The stranger stirred again. He did a step toward him.

_"_Will, calm down. It's all right, you're exhausted and-"

The deer beast cut fabric scars in the blanket, pulling hard at his hip. His skeletal chest heaved frantically as if it were laughing. Taunting him. His carbon black hooves left arches on the ground. It was still two steps away from him.

"Get out." instructed Will between convulsively clenched jaw halves. Naked panic welled from his bright dilated iris. "Get out of here!"

He thought he heard something crack miserably in his throat, then he tasted bitter sharp metal in his mouth and coughed. The gray shirt he wore sprinkled with sparkling ruby spots.

A chirping sound, similar to a piercing siren echoed from the walls and three men in color faded clothes rushed around his bed where he writhed.

And he still saw the stranger between the struggling and gesticulating bodies, flashing like a fluctuating torch head in a sea of darkness. His undaunted gaze fixed on him. Reddish and haggard.

_Who is that anyway? Who is -_

The babble of voices was loud, dull and annoying as buzzing flies.

Then he closed his eyes and drifted off again.

He was very, very tired.

* * *

"Explain this to me, Donald."

Hannibal Lecter's face was devoid of any emotional expression. But his voice was sharp and rich like a harpoon. The burning in his deep black pupils reminded Dr. Sutcliffe of the depths of satanic hell as Alighieri had described them in his Divine Comedy. But for some strange reason he was aware the role of the pilgrim Dante had not been transferred to him, but that of Charon, who sailed with the dead sinner souls on his ship and brought them into the more gruesome circles of Inferno. And this man in front of him? He wavered between the portrait of an avenging Lucifer and the judging King Midas. Both statutes seemed not to want to give him any mercy.

"These brain hemorrhage that could be stopped successfully ... " Lecter went on in that awfully quiet tone (Sutcliffe compared it to a path of broken glass, on which he had to wade barefoot and blindfolded). "May I ask if it was located near the hippocampus?"

Sutcliffe swallowed. A small vein on his left temple swelled to shallow throbbing. He had not missed the slightly mocking component, outweighed in Lecter's last sentence. He was terribly reluctant, a similar procedure as the one being a beginner who was responsible for a mistake that made all the organs of a patient inoperable, so they could not even use them for transplantation.

"Yes." he finally pressed out drily and it annoyed him beyond measure to recognize potential in Lecter's derisive glance. His former colleague. The man, who had decided to become a psychratrist after one of his successful operations failed, and yet he still was a whispered legend with an impressive record. Sutcliffe would have given much for harvesting equivalent fame.

"Located right or left?" Lecter went on. Slowly but surely, the psychatrist seemed to like the interrogation.

"You know it makes no difference." Sutcliffe replied lamely instead. Why exactly did he do wrong for having _Will Graham_ on his desk (again)? Why did he have deal with Hannibal Lecter, the man who must think of Will Graham as precious in every possible way, when one looked quickly at the magnificent rings they wore on their left hand? A few drops of sweat glistened on his mustache. He hoped Lecter did not see them.

Of course he saw them, unfortunately.

"I just want to inform myself about every detail I can get." he said politely, but firmly. "Or do I have to consult my lawyer about this?" His European accent broke through, more than usual. Probably the current situation and his increasing anger were responsible for that. That was rare. Sutcliffe had never seen him lose his composure during an operation for once.  
The strands of his jaw muscles were clearly visible when he answered.

"Right." he said. It was like standing to the wall and expect the coup de grace.

Lecter looked at him, the jacket neatly folded over one arm in front of the heaving chest, his head slightly lowered, his eyes like polished knife edges. Sutcliffe saw a flourishing bloodlust germinate in these eyes and it made his pulse beat stronger against his veins. Although it was not the first time that disappointed relatives bequeathed him with such a view, something about this man gave him the confidence that he could actually mean it ... and it frightened him. A little bit.

"Dr. Stevens will bring me the CT images again, but it seems that Mr. Graham - Will has suffered damage in the region of his long-term memory." he droned (more hasty than intended).

"What do you intend to do about it?" was all he received to pay for this critical information.

"Well ..." Sutcliffe searched for words, thought, before he said: "We are not able yet to assess how bad his memory loss really is and -"

"He forgot me." Lecter cut him off. "The person with whom he was planning to take the covenant of marriage and to spend the rest of his life nearly seven hours ago. And now I'm a nobody, while an acquaintance of ours has moved to my place like a mongoose that forced in an old snake skin. Is this fact not alarming enough!?"

Sutcliffe nodded. "Of course, this is a strange development, but this is one reason we must be even more careful about it. If I didn't know better, I'd say his memories have colorfully mixed in the accident and restructured with existing standards, particularly those of his short-term memory. So Dr. Chilton has automatically taken your place as his fiance and you... well."**  
**  
This sentence was followed by an awkward silence. Sutcliffe rubbed his neck.

"Dr. Sutcliffe?"

Fast Addressed had heard aufgeschnaubt relief. Better a distraction in the form of meat and color of a third person, for a unending duel between him and the former Star-surgeon of the station.  
When he turned slightly in the direction of the other voice, Hannibal's movements followed him like a reflection of broken mirror shards.  
Dr. Chilton stood before them in the passage. A hand draped on the knob of his cane, the other hiding in a pocket of his jacket. He came towards them in modest speed, accompanied by rhythmical knocking. Sutcliffe held out his hand. Chilton took it with a serious expression on his face.**  
**"Dr. Chilton." Sutcliffe greeted the psychiatrist formally, since he did not know what to upscale or dignified level he had to behave in front of this man. "Good thing we were able to reach you so early today. We were already talking about you."

Chilton raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, I didn't drive home if you mean that." he explained rigorously, leaning his weight slightly, causing his figure to shift to the right side. "I kept myself alive with the instant coffee of the hospital until the sun came out. Nasty stuff, but it keeps awake."

"May I ask what is the meaning of his presence here? " asked Hannibal before Sutcliffe was even able to a nod.

Chilton threw him a look that seemed too similar to the one llamas gave before they spit.

"This I'd like to know as well." he said piqued, turned back to Sutcliffe. "Even if I had asked more friendly."

The doctor took a deep breath. His hands clung together, formed a finger roof. He had good reason to call for Chilton. There were matters which could not be postponed, and with this he wanted to finish them early. Even if the products that should result from them would probably not find favor by both parties.

"Will is both physically and mentally stable for now." he said soothingly, whereby he observed a gentle shoulder sink of Chilton. "What he needs now is much more of this stability. An anchor he can hold onto before the next waves wash away him. Too much confusion would poison his mind rather than cure and-"

"Express yourself more clearly." Chilton said. Well, he had an impatient caliber too. Sutcliffe sighed inwardly. _Have I accidentally walked under a ladder today or met a black cat without realizing it !?_

Your friend – _colleague_," corrected Sutcliffe, as Lecter looked at him sharply. "He seems to have suffered slight amnesia during the accident. We suspect it is temporarily limited, but we can not say much about its true standards. Not yet." he added to avoid criticism.

Chilton frowned.

"This is really tragic and I'm sorry for Will's memory loss, but what does that have to do with me?"

"Oh, it has explicitly to do with you." repeated the doctor slowly, licked his parched lips. "Will seems to have brought some definite principles into confusion. He believes that you are his fiance and that you'll marry in less than a year."

Silence. The unbelieving knowledge in Chilton's distorted face. Wide-open eyes.  
... The blaze in them.

Then.

"WHAT!?"

Chilton looked questioningly to Lecter, who behaved like a statue.

"But what-"

"Dr. Lecter doesn't _exist_ anymore for Will Graham. When Will saw him, he chased him out." Sutcliffe said in a pragmatic voice. "His person is gone, wiped away with a wet sponge from the school board. Will probably transferred all the emotions he associated with him, to you. Was there recently an incident that could have particularly impressed in his memory? One that might have encouraged this influence?"

Chilton thought. Sutcliffe realized that his hand dug deeper into the wood of his cane. Lecter said nothing. His face was similar to a grave. Stony and dead.

After careful deliberation Chilton shook his head.

"No. The last time we spoke was at a reception held at the end of an opera. This has been… several weeks ago."

Sutcliffe sensed a chance.

"Interesting." The doctor folded his arms. "Had there been a dispute? Some sort of confrontation?"

"Not that I knew of."

But the answer came a bit too quickly to be genuine. Meanwhile, Sutcliffe sighed.

"If that's so I can't explain it either. But well, it does not change the fact that his brain pressed the delete button."

"What will you do about it?" Chilton's tone was sour with curiosity. Sutcliffe shrugged.

"Nothing." he revealed, uncomfortably stepped from one foot to the other. "Not yet." he admitted after two breaths. "You were both men of medicine before you changed into psychology. You know that amnesia is always a tricky thing."

"And what should we do? Just leave him in that condition? Pretend as if all was the same?"

"Exactly what I wanted to suggest."

"Perverse." Lecter said coldly, thus latching on the conversation again. Sutcliffe glared at him.  
"It's merciful." he disagreed." I offer you a gracious period of twenty weeks. Give him his illusion, carry his belongings and everything else that has a nostalgic value to him to Chilton's dwelling and keep him under close observation. Not a syllable about his intimate connection with Dr. Lecter, and **no** allusions to past experiences or anything else that might confuse him and throw his nerves into disarray. If he doesn't regain his memory of his own accord, then ..."

He left the sentence unfinished. None of them spoke a word.  
No one knew at the end, how long the silence had lasted, as Lecter's voice pierced through the membrane.

"Twelve." he finally summoned. "Twelve and no less. Then he'll be told about everything."

"Oh please, Hannibal." Chilton groaned, rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Are you serious? Three months? Are you scared of cancelling the wedding date?"

"I have not the slightest doubt that Will will recover in the near future."

"Of course you don't." Chilton replied snidely. "But before this miracolous healing begins, you should give me your ring first."

Hannibal stared at him as if his opponent had just asked for one of his kidneys.

"_What_?" His voice was a coffin nail.

Chilton opened his lips to say something, but closed them again and waved.

"Oh, you know what? Keep it. I will buy one for my own, one that suits my style. It will frame the whole thing as even more realistic."

"More realistic?" echoed Lecter skeptical. "Does that mean you agree with the proposal? Without further ado?"

"Of course. After all, I can't abandon someone who's stuck in such a horrible situation." Chilton wore an indignant expression on display, as he could not believe Lecter actually thought he wouldn't want to accept this 'offer'. "Relax. My intentions are of purely chivalrous nature. After the deadline, I'll bring him washed and brushed in a basket on your doormat. I vow this to you."

"I doubt that."

"Whether you're in doubt or not is irrelevant. Here it's just a matter of what is best for Will Graham. And that may apparently be my humble self."

"Guard your tongue."

"What will you do? Serve it to me with lima beans and cooked rice?"

Lecter's eyes narrowed to quietly seething slits.

"You still remember my little joke." he said without recognizable emotion.

Chilton clucked his tongue.

"Your humor remains in memory. Something I can no longer tell from _my_ poor Will now. I'll remember to tell him the joke, when I take him out to a fine restaurant."

Lecter's mouth fell a bit.

"I guess he'll return as hungry as he entered - my experience prophesies me that he needs more substantial fare than your rabbit food."

"Don't worry, I'll show him the culinary arts of vegetarianism. A pleasure he has hardly expanded with you, I guess."

"I know what his body requires most. I take care of my partner."

"So will I." Chilton countered bluntly, pierced at his watch, as if he was already weary of this conversation. "If you can spare time to write me a list of his allergies, please... I want to be prepared for everything."

Lecter's left eyebrow twitched imperceptibly.

"Food allergies?" he asked, but his voice sounded a little hollow. As he would not believe his own words (he didn't).

"**All** allergies." Chilton replied promptly, as he had been waiting for this question. "Also, if he tolerates latex or nicht." he added smugly, grinning.

A confused Sutcliffe looked between the two psychopaths / psychologists back and forth, then the penny dropped. A tenth of a second later burning blood rolled into his cheeks with a smacking sound. That grown men deigned to such childish allusions ... well, they were effective anyway. Hannibal's face remained heroically unmoved, but his skin was chalk white.

Before a physical dispute threatened to take action Sutcliffe raised his arms as he would whistle to a close.

"Dr. Chilton, it would be better if you could go to Will immediately now, Room 66." he interfered. "He has expressly requested you and it would be unhealthy for a patient's condition to be ignored by his relatives for too long."

For the first time since their encounter, Chilton smiled at him widely. But his eyes were strangely dull.

"In fact, doctor, I agree with you completely. Will should get what he needs." he purred. He did not even turn around as he spoke to Lecter one last time. "Right, Hannibal? It's his choice after all."

He turned his back at them without goodbye disappeared in the adjoining corridor, overrun by nurses, slipped through the crowd and was gone. For the moment at least.

Lecter and Sutcliffe watched him go, each loaded with different feelings and thoughts. Then Sutcliffe apologized hastily and put forward (as a defense) that there were other patients, he had to take care of. Lecter nodded. As they shook hands in farewell, Sutcliffe involuntarily jerked back from the cold that was waiting in the psychiatrist's fingertips.

* * *

Frederick could not believe his luck.

The cane clacked in the pace of his footsteps as he crossed the corridors of the Baltimore State Hospital. The occasionally bumping of some employees did not bother him and also the rarely murmured excuses were wiped with noncommittal silence off the disk of his thoughts. It was in an inevitably radiant mood.

He probably would have even sung _I'm walking on sunshine_, if the hospital had not sprayed its oppressive atmosphere. The smell of disinfectant and washing soap wafted around his nose and blocked his senses for enjoyable impressions.

The war of words he had just delivered with Hannibal made his calves still a bit soft, but he held himself upright, crackling by sudden rushes of left adrenaline.  
He was charged, almost _high_. And when he got into his stride, he couldn't stop. Words and hidden insults had bubbled over his tongue like champagne or arrows from liquid-shaped wax and they had met their target, _each_ target. He had no regrets.  
Previously, he could not have done anything like this. Could not have been so _nasty _at Hannibal Lecter. _Previously._

But now someone had turned the tables. Whether God himself or Dolarhyde, he did not care. However, he would probably send an expensive bouquet of flowers to him and wish him a fast recovery. Two hours before he had cursed this man and said he would deserve a prison stay in one of the cells in Guantanamo Bay._ Now_ it seemed he couldn't pay him high enough for this misfortune. The proven service of it was tremendous. Almost inhuman.

He had constantly speculated how he should secede Will Graham from Hannibal Lecter's influence. He had thought of thousands of variants, discaring numerous of them after careful consideration.  
Nevertheless, he **wanted** this profiler with the outstanding empathy. He longed to acquire the right of ownership, being able to identify him as a exclusive, personal patient and he sought the sole credit for the results that he could tease out of the extraordinaire psyche of this man, pulling them to the surface.  
That Will's damaged memory chose him as fiance, leaving Hannibal as nobody, was not that important. No, it merely resembled the coreless Amarena cherry on the powdered cream pie roof of his world.  
He stopped. The room door Will Graham rested behind, reminded him of the flat compressed template of an ash-gray castle. Number 66 winked at him, blinking, as if to encourage him in taking action.

_The devil's in the details_. he thought, and his lips curled into a slight smile.

Then he gripped the knob, turned it in a bossy way and went inside.

* * *

The room was a bit spooky. Frederick thought more of a chamber of horrors than of a hospital room. The plastic flowers on the window couldn't change anything about this impression. He looked around, saw the waxen wallpaper, completely held in clean white-washed, rare furniture. Then his gaze slid to the bed and the man lying in it.  
Will's eyes were closed. Frederick wondered if he truly slept or only acted like he did in order to eliminate undue interferences in advance.

He ignored the chair next to Will and sat down on his bed instead. The mattress creaked under the added weight. He ignored it.

Frederick remained in this position for a while, watching the face of the profiler. Despite the incorrigible stubble that adorned his chin and lower jaw, he looked almost unbearably young at this moment. People like Will Graham had become almost extinct in contrast to the other human _species _around him. He was to sensitive for his own good. He was one of them that were easy to kill, easy to maim and torture. Toys of the great powers. Frederick found irony in his thoughts. The whole life was a disaster, in which one was restlessly looking for a punch line that should be never found. For the point of it all that was found in death only.

Frederick sighed inwardly. He soon found himself in the situation of stretching out his hand and watched as it came to rest on Will's cheek, stroking the skin. The stubble poked like little embroidery needles, but it did not feel as uncomfortable as he had thought earlier. The flesh between was smooth and warm and ready to split upon from external influence of any kind.  
He did not deserve this fate. Not the burden of his forced transfer, not the nightmares that brought him the murders of other people, not the agony of being constantly quartered internally and sometimes not knowing who he was.  
Frederick knew what Hannibal Lecter saw in this man. Not only based on his mental taste or flaming curiosity.

He had never been particularly successful in distributing his feelings by acts or words of expression. He preferred the armor of arrogance, the shell of his sarcasm. Behind his shield, there was much more to discover than that, including vulnerable tissue. Scar tissue at most. Frederick wondered if Will's scars would make an intricate pattern with his own if they mingled their bodies...

"Will?" he whispered, shaking his shoulder gently. "Hey, Will."

His heart pounded with an irregular hardness against his chest. A thin film of sweat glistened on his neck. He wanted to look him in the eyes. Wanted to get the undoubtful evidence that Sutcliffe had spoken about facts and not some silly speculation. If this was the case, he had verbally stomped Hannibal Lecter into the ground for nothing.

Will produced a humming sound out of tune, as the dotted vibrations from his shoulder moved to his brain. He mumbled. Then he blinked frantically, torn from a dream without a name and without light. The lids snapped open and two circles of shimmering indigo got caught in Frederick's greenish iris. He saw the process, the amazement, the fleeting flash of rage, the knowledge and then ... then ... affection. Unadulterated.

"Hey." Will muttered, and despite the roughened tone sincere joy sounded in his baritone. "You're here."

He whispered, as if one had crushed his throat in a vise minutes earlier. He made a move, wanted to sit up but Frederick acted instinctively.

"Don't boil the ocean." he ordered sternly, and was surprised himself about the strange, almost maternal gentleness in his voice. Will gave him no great difficulties. He slumped back, as the psychiatrist put his hand on his chest and pushed him down into the pillows again. Will grabbed it, covered Frederick's fingers with his and exhaled a slowly trembling breath. Frederick took it as a good sign that he wanted to feel his heat and touch, welcomed it in a genuine sense.

"So, did you sleep well?" he asked, trying to substantiate a pathetic joke of relief in their conversation.

"Disastrous." Will replied tinny, cleared his throat. "One nurse has constantly awoken me to ask some banal questions. What's my name, where do I live, if I have pets and stuff. I have no idea why, must be routine here."

Fredericks hand moved from Will's chest to his hair, stroked through the thickish, unruly curls that were a jungle for itself.

"I could denounce a senior physician." he said ironically, chose the words but only half in jest.

Will raised his mouth to an exhausted grin.

"Nobody likes a snitch."

"_You_ like me." Frederick countered cheekily and already felt more in his element, but also so unusually strange it almost hurt.

Will cocked his head. His eyes sparkled as exposed by mosquito nets, but vigilant.

"Hm,_ like_ would be said too much. You took quite your time with the visit." he replied and leaned forward. Frederick came to meet him, for he suspected, Will wanted to say something, but could not find the strength to speak louder.

But Will did not speak.  
He kissed him.

Frederick was taken aback when the soft lips were suddenly on his. Instinctively he gave them support, so professional / natural, as he could bring up despite the precipitous situation. He had factores such a tenderness indeed, but never thought that Will would require it so quickly. He had rather preferred to plan it like that night after the opera, as they had danced on the balcony, physically and mentally balanced and intertwined. He remembered how Hannibal had broken in this scene and destroyed everything as he usually did.  
But Hannibal was not here ... not in this room, and what was even more important, not in Will's thoughts.

_He has just been made aware that he has narrowly escaped death._ _Would you not be hungry for a love confession as well? A proof that it was right to survive !?  
_  
The psychiatrist thought of the hardly elapsing hours, after the doctors had laboriously stitched the remains of his body together.  
He put his fingers around Will's neck and gently directed him closer, pressing their mouths against each other more forcefully.  
_The taste of clotted blood ...  
_He knew the taste firsthand. And he felt a paradoxical sense of belonging, a common experience. Both of them were alone now. They only had each other to rely on.

He liked this concept better and better. As he had found the lost piece of the puzzle to a church mosaic and put into the missing form. He was ... happy.

Frederick had not even confessed under torture that the loneliness gnawed at him.

He was a wealthy man. Rich. He could have bathed in Dollar Bills every Sunday morning as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory had done joyfully in the blood of murdered virgins, but he had money in abundance badge. He lacked nothing. But his house was big, gigantic even, especially for someone who spent his evenings in seclusion. The emptiness was it that flourished, despite all costly gems and equipment. It had bothered him more and more often over the years.

Will would enrich him in more than one aspect. He was quite capable of providing the necessary comfort, just like Hannibal Lecter could. He could show compassion if needed. His colleagues might whisper behind his back, calling him an arrogant bastard (it tired him to deny this), but he was not made of stone. He had a heart like any other and was needy for romantic contact as everyone else. And also the willingness to engage someone in his life, an intimate caregiver instead of the asshole of service everone knew.

The irony was to taste in the air. The aroma of unripe grapes.

Frederick's breath steamed in the air, as they parted.

"I guess that means you're doing better?" he asked. His voice was thickish somehow.

"I live." came the brief, casual answer, underlined with a gentle laugh. The words escaped from now slightly red mottled, swollen lips. "When can I get out of here?"

"They still want to make some tests."

Will's eyes narrowed and the skin around them turned into delicate, pale crumbling wrinkles. He did not like that prospect as it seemed. Frederick understood him. Since Gideon wanted to turn him into a burst piñata, he also had a healthy dislike of hospitals and everything that had to do with them. He only felt safe in his own hospital - the mental institution -. This was his kingdom. His castle. And his office the King's Chamber. He loved to be his own master, but here among these foreign doctors he was not more than a dirty lint would have been in an alcove. His surgical career had proved to be a gross misstep and Frederick avoided to be reminded of these premises. What did not always succeed.

"And then?" Will asked him with an undercurrent of mistrust.

Frederick smiled.

"Then we'll go home, Darling." The nickname balanced foreign and awkward on his tongue, but it weighed in with a sweet component he expected to taste more of in the near future. "Home. Okay? ".  
He swallowed a nervous lump down his throat and was looking for Will's hand, held it in a gentle grip. His thumb pad stroked over the sensitive skin around the knuckles. He pretended nothing, he had rehearsed this behavior primarily. But his acting changed, similar to his surgical skills - in lousy area.

The chaste touch relaxed Will visibly, something that made Frederick wonder, when he had always known the profiler as reserved, implying longer eye or body contact not longer than need. Instead, he gave him a smile and gently flickering in his iris. Their fingers were intertwined. Will squeezed back slightly. The accident had left its mark in spite of everything.

"Okay." he whispered. He sighed. "I'm so glad you're here." The syllables were like dead leaves plucked of their trees from the maternal autumn wind and scattered on the yellow grass. The scratches on his cheeks glowed like red painted comet tails.

Frederick reflected the smile with a wider template and forgot to worry about whether he might seem manic or not. "Me too." he said, squeezing Will's hand a little tighter. "Me too."

He would never have guessed that this day, when he had feared the worst, to be endowed with the greatest gift of his life. An unexpected patient AND future partner. Maybe he could turn these twelve weeks he had into something that could last forever. Maybe he managed to outdo even Hannibal by this special opportunity. The great Hannibal Lecter. The impressive Hannibal Lecter. He would take him his beloved treasure and make it his own. He would outdo him, beat him in his own game.

Who should have the power to mess with him now?

He had plenty of time ...

Today, fate loved him to death.

* * *

_Being able to forget is a great happiness, to be forgotten is a great suffering._

_~ Unknown ~_


	5. Glass Bone Game

_**In visions of the dark night**_

_In visions of the dark night  
I have dreamed of joy departed,  
But a waking dream of life and light  
Hath left me broken-hearted._

_Ah! what is not a dream by day_  
_To him whose eyes are cast_  
_On things around him with a ray_  
_Turned back upon the past?_

_That holy dream -that holy dream,_  
_While all the world were chiding,_  
_Hath cheered me as a lovely beam_  
_A lonely spirit guiding._

_What though that light, thro' storm and night,_  
_So trembled from afar,_  
_What could there be more purely bright_  
_In Truth's day-star._

_~ Edgar Allan Poe_

* * *

_The waves roll wild this night._

_The moon bobs as smooth journeyman on the edge of the fermenting horizon without face and grace. Blindly he's peeping over the sea, wrapped in furry blackness. The water beneath is a pushing monster, a guard, slumbering in a sleep of lawful bitterness. Sharp winds whistle around his burnt crater troughs. It's very cold out here, but he forgets to shiver._  
_It's quiet on the ocean. No song, no melody vibrates on the bright dark blanket of wet sapphire._  
_A rock in the middle of the neck protrudes out of the Aqua Heart, where the spray drops its foamy crown. The stone ruins are pointed and jagged, depraved and cunning by the frost covered winter season. Exhausted by its existence, hardened by its resistance. A giant who has bitten death's tongue, when he came to fetch him. Since then a non-moving, slender chunk over the coral reefs._  
_On its surface lies a new birth, proposing a hiccup breath._  
_An alabaster skin fences the thin, sad flesh, black, curly seaweed swirls around the head and falls into the forehead's stretched, smooth surface. The birth is naked as births are always naked when they come into this world. Still wet and salty from the depths it ascended from and crawled on the rough grayish promise for a hold._

_Sparkling drops glow like leaked tears casting on arms and back. Opening the clam lips and closing apathetically, the recently-formed nostrils quiver, sucking oxygen to inhale death and decay and the smell of oily fish. The gills on its throat's sides fan out and shrink, both in a stupid, horrible rhythm. The chest trembles and jitters, infested by ice beyond the sheltered tide that kept it previously embedded in its slimy heat. Topaz scales pave the path from its hips down to its feet, ending in a broad-brimmed tail fin and a breeze's teeth pluck weakly at its grooves. It all looks so tender on him, so tender and delicate, but the first impression is a deception. If you touch the skin, you will glide, slick and slippery as it is. You touch the fin, so it twitches in anger, but finally it's the fear that drives it to lunge out for a strike.  
It has not opened his eyes yet, but the moon knows the shadow they will cast. The home is hidden in its iris. Pupils to fill up with pitch and doubt, with blood and entrails at once, reflect, analyze, seize, expropriate. Emergence._

_A golden pendulum swings behind its heart._

_Adapt. Evolve. Become._

_A new existence. Blameless, pure, and greedy for the consuming burden of life. Introduced fresh and unprocessed. A sanctuary of flesh and color. But shrines build next to graves. Only dirt and grime build the protective crust that hides the spirit. The sea knows that. And the sea suffers._  
_The birth is male._  
_The moon calls him Will. The moon loves / hates Will. The moon fears for Will. But the moon is a murderer, so what does it mean then? Every desire is tainted by nature._  
_The moon frumbles with skeleton rays after him, this cramped, angel / devil being, but he isn't able to reach, the bustling, throbbing miracle is too far away. He must let him go. Consider the pain and his loss of the width. Earn miles and slivers of his self-perception. Despise his happiness. Until the following night breaks into the firmament and the faceless king ascends in the dizzying heights of the rarefied atmosphere anew._

_The moon drops, the moon breaks and when he sees that Will begins to stir, rears up and clenches his fists, he proceeds his fall with horrible delight. Thus, the pale Colossus tumbles into the sea's abyss, without sound and without shaft. Buried by sand and floating grass and the creatures that gargle with green blood in their veins._

_No light, except the tiny glimmer of the stars illuminated the now soulless scene after the sun disc dipped behind the sky line. And the only noise is the howling/roaring cry of the living, mighty -_

**"Dr. Lecter?"**

* * *

Hannibal blinked. The pen, he had just used to ride anthracite lines on virgin paper was held in his right hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger. A lead shadow crept a few inches below the approach of his thumb nail, painting his hot blooming skin.  
He took a deep breath, listened to the silence of the room. Hadn't he just heard something? Someone? The hesitant reputation of his name?  
He waited. Waited.

Wai ... ti ... ng ...

Nothing happened.  
Hannibal practice lined up in a cradle forever rattling of calm. Isolated from earthly failings and transcience. The light from the outside world pierced through some cracks, the velvet-lined curtains at the windows allowed unobstructed. It overran the parquet floor with smooth, golden stripes. Sun scars of feeding dawn glow, clinging red and bleeding in the lagging fibers of the Persian carpet adorning the center of the room soft edged. It awarded a cozy, peaceful touch. Or the feud before the start of reaching storm, depending on where the mood, and thus the sense was interpreted.  
After about two minutes, Hannibal shook his head and his irritated eyes focused on his drawing. Soon the pen scratched on the pressed wood again, his thoughts wandering into dark realms behind and towards the moon, the sea and masochism. In the background flickering flames crackled in the fireplace. A bass without choral accompaniment. A lonely solo.

It was early evening. Everything was quiet.

There was a muffled knock on the door.

"Dr. Lecter? Dr. Lecter, are you in there?"

Hannibal went on like a fever dream, put his tools away and finally rose from his chair. The baritone echo resounded through the wood layer of the sealed entrance and the entire room was soft and weak and quiet, but that did not bother his recognition. And Hannibal knew that voice all too well. It had been burned into his ears as the impression of a steaming/melting hot horseshoe in cattle. While walking he straightened the collar of his shirt, the sleeves hit at their lawful folded space and already practiced now the half astonished, half mask costume calculating, he wanted to ask when opening on the stage of his face. But the heart in his chest did not bother with such civilized nonsense. It throbbed violently against his breastbone, driven by pleasure as he covered the door handle, turned it down and was granted access to the adjacent waiting room.

_Will_

Will Graham stood in front of him. His jacket hang over his arm in loose fashion, auburn curles wrapped around his cheeks and the coy attempt of a smile in the left corner of his mouth. Hannibal suffered much at this moment. A mixture of joy and envy, sorrow, and the aftertaste of a broken wax seal and the beguiling scent of a vulgar aftershave that bore a ship on its bottle.  
These were features that had become rare and beautiful for Hannibal. On the other hand, he had to add a snake bitter component that struck this ménage a breath later. Automatically he inspected the other man within seconds from head to toe. Hannibal knew the faded jeans that hugged the profiler's legs. In their joint household it had been one of the usual pictures**. **To the great displeasure of the psychiatrist, who had loved to see Will's body in more flattering, expensive wardrobe. The navy blue jeans, however, had been there one of these pieces, Will never wanted to give away, no matter what Hannibal told. So it was no surprise that he wore them even today. But it was the shirt that dripped a sour note on Hannibal's tongue. A black, long-sleeved shirt made of cashmere, clinging to his marble white neck like a forbidden lover, overflowing his hips like a veil of shadow. It fit him like a glove, as if it were woven for him since birth, but that was not what gnawed at Hannibal's emotional construct.  
He had never seen Will in this shirt before. He knew Will would never have bought such an exclusive shirt himself. He didn't care about looking impressive. Ipso there was only one final, devastating possibility ...

_Frederick dresses him._

Hannibal knew how to read information from most minimal details. And here he read with waning enthusiasm bottomed anger that Chilton had already begun to take Will his own way. Offering nobler clothing was only the tip of the iceberg and the psychiatrist suffered from the melancholy idea what sat there under the first layer of flesh and bone and how deep it would cut. In the fleshen clay he had kneaded and modeled so carefully.

What a shame. What a waste. It hurt Hannibal's soul.

"I hope I don't disturb you." it muffled in his ears like kisses on sand.

"Not at all. You're on schedule." he heard himself reply. He could swear to have smiled, as he took a step backwards prompting a gesture that was supposed to mean _Welcome_.

_Welcome_

home?

Will was here, as he had been before. A rejected part of his brain had to keep this point in time, putting in a stitch, then let it go.

As the door shut behind them, Hannibal watched as Will mastered the first resilient steps in his practice. He saw his younger counterpart bowing his head slightly, how the body turned, how his eyes glided like falling russet autumn leaves quickly over each identifiable angle of the premises. The paning burned a curvy line into the diffractive neck, sprinkled the skin with locked ends. The rise and fall of his working chest was displayed wonderfully from among the thinned membrane of tightly laced fabric. Even otherwise, the texture of his other body proportions were admirably covered by the decongestant glow in the fled darkness of day. When Will finally turned back to him they kept contact for a split second, two banks of shimmering indigo clung to Inferno brown. The psychiatrist felt like Caesar, while Brutus rammed a dagger in his back. The first of many. The wound paved his mental path so deep that it reached to his substance, bounded and burned.

"You have a… nice office." Will said, his baritone a rough symphony, hands hidden in his pockets, the roaring tumult behind his lips all too present. An increased squinting of eyelids, the vile revival of frowning wrinkles on his forehead. The wetting of his dusty mouth. Notes for the effort, while he fumbled for clues in his perforated memory, searching after reasonable evidence to have visited this place several times before today. A connection between present and past.**  
**  
Hannibal was silent. Attended the struggle of his fiancé (this fact did not change, even when he kept the sacred ruby ring in his nightstand drawer) without saying anything.  
He himself was in a torn position.

He felt the need to tell Will everything immediately. To explain with glutting detail why their impersonal, plump salutation was, earlier digestible, now a thorn in his side. That his distant, befremdetes behavior should be a farce and that Frederick Chilton tried to make a caricature of a relationship that had been more than unique. He would make him pay for it, that was sure, but now he had to make his best out of this ugly situation anyway. Had to pay attention that no traitorous word escaped his lips in their shared conversation, at least not unplanned. He was a specialist in manipulation… sometimes he didn't wish it to be that way.**  
**He would have to insert a new start here, sprinkle fresh input into the careworn soul. Maybe this cruel progress possible could be corrected faster than he had planned.

Maybe ... uncertainty was the Achilles' tendon of kings.

"Dr. Lecter? Have you listened to me?"

The addressed man raised his head a little, blinked. He wondered, then decided on the truth. Exceptionally.

"Sorry, Will, I was in thought. What did you say again?" His tone crept into a neutral illuminated face. Will inspected his as well, but it was too dark to see anything. Hannibal did nothing to put his finger in the wound.  
Will's thoughts ended in a throat clearing and an unpleasant view, rotating alternately in the right area of the practice to where Hannibal's majestic fireplace and writing desk stood. His eyes remained a few seconds on the elongated sheet of paper.

"I said that I'm sorry." he said finally.

Hannibal went to one of his armchairs, sat down and crossed his legs. His vision solely focused on Will Graham's fragmented facade. "What are you talking about?" he asked quietly. Of course, he already knew the facts, but he did not show it, wanted to listen to Will's explanation. He had not heard his voice for days.

Will dug his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans and looked at the floor. He seemed embarrassed, but held no excessive redness in the area of face or neck.

"That I've snapped at you. In the hospital room." he replied, after taking a deep breath. "I was obnoxious ... and very rude. I didn't know who you are and in what connection you ... I was unfair."

Hannibal tilted his head lightly. His arms were left on the fabric-covered backs. The tip of his right pointer finger pressed more firmly than usual in the pitch-black reference.

"Furthermore you need not worry. You were under post-traumatic stress, had survived a car accident only few hours ago ..."

"It was still unfair." Will insisted stubbornly. "You seemed very upset ... I really am sorry." It reminded almost of a mantra, this _I'm sorry I'm sorry_. Hannibal wondered if Will deep, very deep inside his crystalline soul cocoon, was trying to apologize for more than the singular reason of disrespect. It would have been a morbid conception and at the same time a comedic glimmer of hope that not everything was lost. That _it_ existed and had been buried alive by mistake and just needed a jump start to get back to the surface, breathing and coughing blood.

"I've already forgiven you." he said gently, folded his hands to create a narrowly articulating skin bridge of fingers, rested his chin on them without looking away from Will. _I always would_ it hissed in his thoughts, but he kept it under wraps. "Your dismissal has been a week ago. How do you feel?"

Will shrugged. Quite more emotion-driven than free decision.

"Well, strange somehow." he said. His eyes observed the carpet growing like rust-red grass between his shoes. "Disillusioned." he added after long deliberation. Then he sighed. There was a faint, muffled sound. "I still don't understand why this needed to happen."

Hannibal did not move from the spot, not even flinched an inch in the expensive, smooth leather armchair. Usually he would have politely offered his patient/guest to take a seat too, but the profiler seemed rushed this evening, nearly pumped with crude nervousness and coarse ropes and Hannibal could not take his eyes from this quivering bag of nerves, feeling the heart flutter like a goldenthroat with ruffled wings behind his rib cage, not knowing where it should flee or how.

"Your memory loss?" he asked. His voice was a river bed, relieved of storm, wind and hail. An immovable mountain. An achor, rammed in wet sand.

His voice was a lie.

"Yes ..." Will took a hand, passed it through his curled hair. "I mean, I remember many things. I remember my work, several murders, my colleagues, my friends, even the years of my college days. However, there are gaps. Dr. Sutcliffe hasn't told me why."

"Gaps of what kind?"

Will raised his head. Their eyes met for an endless hunt, melted into one another. Then Will's Iris expanded and jumped like a young deer, his face turned south, pulling himself up using an invisible, tangled route along Hannibal's tie, his jungle green jacket, the electric light on yellowish-lined documents covering the oak table.

_Reverse engineering_ Hannibal thought. _An ounce of distress carved into his bones._ He had already suspected that something similar would happen, but to see this idea confirmed, painted on a different canvas.

"Gaps like… you."

The psychiatrist was silent. _An anvil seated in his stomach._ He gulped quietly, but prevented his Adam's apple while not the active border hoppers. The saliva in his throat crumbled like flour grains down his esophagus. This anonymity. This cancellation. Like murder, but far more effective, ugly in this effectiveness, guttural and impersonal. Honorless.  
Oh, how he hated it. Hated, hated,** hated**.  
_  
This was __**not**__ his design._

"Jack said, we had known us for six months before. You're the psychiatrist I consult, so he is assured that he doesn't load too much onto me." He pushed his glasses a bit further upon the bridge of his nose. "For truth's sake, I don't find you that interesting." The approach stretched a quizzical smile on his mouth. "But I'd still like to remember you. Just to have a full set of cards on the shelf, understand? You can't play rummy when a joker's missing."

Hannibal nodded. The problem was expressed plastically, but he understood.

"I share this desire." he answered, mindful of stepping back into the familiar, abstinent role. "First and foremost your mental state and its regulation is the most important thing. It has been since our first meeting. But it's never too late to refresh our acquaintance in several areas. And to see what our trust of patient and therapist was explicitly founded on. The result of our friendship."

A microscopic jolt went through Will's body, as if a bee had stung him. Simultaneously, he decided to avail the chair opposite to Hannibal. Like the psychiatrist, he put his arms on the backrest, but his legs were uncrossed and offered the image of deceptive openness. As if he had nothing to hide and no fear to announce this in his posture.

"We were friends ...?" he repeated in surprise. Then a dark spark sat firmly in his eyes and he nodded slightly. "Ah, so ..." He did not elaborate, yet he led the movement to an end. Hannibal did, as if he had not taken notice.

"Yes." he answered simply**. **"A new beginning of this friendship would be highly appreciable. We could - sorry, do I amuse you?"  
Will had broken out in a stuttering chuckle for no apparent reason. Low and flat, quietly, but no less amused.  
"No, it's just-" The left corner of his mouth stretched into a horizontal morbid. "If you are my friend, why do we act like strangers then?" He did a dismissive gesture. "Have you already abandoned yourself from me mentally ? Because of my recently acquired phase of instability? You don't need to lie, I'm accustomed to distance for I usually push it forward first. Just be honest with me. Honesty is everything I want from a man. Especially in this situation."

Hannibal thought before answering. The risk from using the wrong words here were enormous, so he chose them well.

"By creating temporary amnesia I've become a stranger to you." he explained. "Ergo, I don't want us to rush things. It would be wrong to pretend confidential phrases from which you don't know how to handle. But be assured under all circumstances, I was ..." Hannibal corrected himself quickly, rather in affect than planned. "**I am** your friend, Will. This will never change."

Wills half grin was swept away like pattering raindrops on a windshield wiper. Instead, his face framed serious and he snorted. A spiral strand fell on his forehead, smirking.

"Sounds like a psalm verse." he said critically.

"It's a promise. An oath, if you want to call it that way."

"Promises and oaths are meant to be broken."

The psychiatrist listened up. He had not expected this feisty reply.

"In which case are you referring to this statement?".

Will cocked his head.

"Haven'i I told you already? In these six months, where we are supposed to know each other so fucking well?" His voice roared in a sarcastic flair. When he received no confirmation or reply, he leaned back in his chair and spoke again. But more slowly than before. A sluggish sound that merely increased Hannibal's mistrust. "My father used to promise me he would stop drinking every day. Always right before he took me to bed. The next morning, however, his breath smelled after good old Mr. Gin and Tonic again. So don't preach to me about promises or oaths."

Interesting. Hannibal linked his fingers on his right knee. As long as he could remember, Will had very rarely talked about his father. In general, the mention of his parents seemed to be a taboo subject. Earlier, Hannibal had respected this limit, since he himself valued his past to remain unspoken. Now, however, the priorities were different and when an opportunity for unusual twists offered itself to him, he'd take it without resentment and if it had to be, he would strangle it until the last drop of blood fell on this floor.

"And your mother? Did she enhance or mitigate this disappointment?"

"Oh please, Dr. Lecter, this is lazy psychology." the profiler replied and it did not surprise Hannibal at all. Will shifted his weight in a back corner of the chair, so he leaned sideways and his chin was propped on one arm. His eyes were mirrors of smoking glass. "No, she has neither did the one nor did she do the other. For that she would have had to be there. With us. And she wasn't."

"Your mother left you and your father, then?"

"After I turned seven." Will sighed. A rebellious streak of hair bobbed in time with his breaths. "She's been sick. So my father told me at least when he came to speak about her. I think ... she had the same thing as I have. Maybe not in the same concentration, but unbearable after all." He closed his eyes, as he was suffering from pain, opened them again and stared straight ahead. His eyes were empty. "And before her departure she had nothing better to than hand it down to me."

"Do you know anything about her whereabouts?"

"No. I never wanted too. Probably I sound very childish, but she has let us down. I can't forgive her that." He shrugged a shoulder. "I've been left often enough in my life and –" His sentence broke off abruptly. He paused. Hannibal watched fascinated how hot horror imprinted on the relaxed features.

"Shit." Will's fingers brushed over his caught lips, plowing the last syllable scraps from the treacherous opening. " I've never told anyone about that. Not even Alana. Why am I telling you?" It was a rhetorical question, directed more to himself than to the psychiatrist. Bewildered jumped over the bridge, hand in hand with sonorous incomprehension.

Hannibal said nothing, however, afforded a wafer-thin smile that bloomed like blood poppy on his lips.

"Your mother was not strong enough to face the inner demons that were associated with her empathy. But you are." Will glanced at him.

"I don't think I do well."

"You could stop."

"What? My job?"

"The direct confrontation with crime scenes."

Will's mouth imbided the shape and width of a winding burn scar.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I save people-" His eyelids drooped at half-mast. The included blue shimmered like a rippling lake. "I... I didn't choose this error to be mine, but I can use it, so that others benefit from it. So I'm not completely useless at least."

_Useless?_

Hannibal didn't like the word. Not, when he thought about Will.

"Will, are you saying that you consider your person as pejorative when you don't fulfill a purpose for the FBI?"

"Not pejorative." Will admitted, peering for the second time to Hannibal's drawing that slept on the table, stranded like a whale on the beach. "…Only slightly. Interchangeably. Isn't this what every person is in the end?"

_Yes._

"Not quite." said Hannibal. "It's important, in what respect you set this view. However, I can assure you that you aren't interchangeable now. Your empathy has no precedent. If it did, Jack had you pulled you off these cases long since. He knows what he imposes on you while he has no idea in what degree it could obtain. He does not see that it is capable of destroying your mind."

"Sounds as if you wanted me to antagonize against Jack."

"These are facts, not more and not based on accusation of any kind. Although I confess that it makes me angry seeing people or animals suffer unnecessary. That's why I insist on an ethical butcher when I buy my meat."

Will was suddenly very quiet.

"Oh. So I suffer?" he said softly, lurking, almost a whisper. Hannibal licked his dry lips.

"Obviously. Otherwise you wouldn't be in my office right now."

"You also suffered when you were by my bedside. Wasn't this unnecessary as well? Your suffering, risen through mine? It would have cost you nothing to stay away." The profiler was unusually cold. "We both found it better to be on different places - because of death. Isn't this better than doing nothing at all?"

Hannibal remained stonily. He finally nodded, focusing on the explosive scheme change in Will's being, adjusting, patrolling.

"Touché." he said. "It's true, I was worried about you. But that should be my right as your therapist. And of course, as your friend. I regret nothing, not even your outburst, if you think that."

"_Of course_..." Will muttered as in hateful trance. "Of course you regret nothing." He groaned briefly and pressed his index finger to his temple. He seemed to have migraine. "Listen, I was aggressive and panicked when I was in hospital. It was not because of you or the drugs or the after-effects of anesthesia. I saw something that shocked me. And that something was standing next to you."

"Would you describe this _something_ closer?"

Will looked at him. Opened his mouth.

"It –"

At that moment, a cell phone rang and cut the course of their conversation like the pale blade of a katana a piece of flying / pleading paper. Will hesitated, fumbled in his pockets and found a smartphone. Hannibal had only one involuntarily curious look to throw at it to recognize that first; it was the latest model that was currently sold on the market and secondly; it neither fit to Will's budget nor to his unconventional lifestyle, just like the cashmere shirt. Thus, again, an influence, which had acted on the profiler from outside. An influence of the same, annoying source.  
Will unlocked his cell phone, opened the menu. It had been an epileptic kind of ringing. Hannibal bet on a text message. And he was right. The profiler stared at the screen for a few seconds, only to have a brow rising and his thumb typing a one-syllable reply before he turned it into stand by mode.

"My apologies. My fiance. I promised to call him if I-." he murmured absently, put it the phone back in its place and inspected the dial of his watch. His eyes widened. "Oh, so late already? I think I've kinda stretched the length of our session, doctor."

Hannibal also afforded a look at his watch - for the simple principle's sake, not because he thought Will would lie to him.

Indeed, their time was up for half an hour. The sky that pressed against the window panes was black and cloudless. It had gotten dark quickly. Not surprise in the middle of Baltimore winter.

_How tragic.  
Frederick is impatient_.

„It's no problem, Will." he said, felt delicate indignation when he had to observe how the profiler rose from his chair abruptly. "I'll charge the usual, no more, no less."

Will hesitated, then shook his head.

„You don't have to."

"I insist." said Hannibal undaunted, moving to Will's side. "See it as an excuse to Frederick that we've let him wait so long."

Will raised his head, frowning.

"You know Frederick?"

"Sure. We are both active in psychology, Will. Since it's difficult to avoid to meet each other at least for once."

"He hasn't told me."

"Sure he didn't want to spread any gossip about me. Rumors tend to express very nasty."

Will seemed to understand this explanation, because he left it at that.

"Thank you." he said, but did not take the hand that Hannibal reached out to him for a shaking farewell. Instead, he turned around, slipping and they close immediately struggling into his jacket around his body. Hannibal did not complain. Skin contact, eye contact - both reduced. Subtracted variables in thetequation, from which the psychiatrist thought he would solve it in the near future. A miscalculation now.

He accompanied him to the door, always two steps behind him to catch his past flying scent. To inhale it, memorize it**, **keeping it as rare aphrodisiac in his mind**.**

"Maybe it won't take long until I may call you friend again."**  
**  
Hannibal smiled at this statement**.**

„I hope so." he said, stepped forward to open the door, holding it so Will could pass unhindered. "Friday, same time?"

Will nodded in silence, made his path between the enclosed wooden frame and the physical presence of the doctor. The hustle and bustle he had dragged to start with and shaken continuously at their followed conversation, came back to the light. _Interesting_ how Hannibal had found. _My person still has a sufficient effect on him and his behavior, even if he doesn't realize it actively. A part of me nests in his bones. I can't let him waste away. I can't -_

"Will?"

Named man turned around. Blinked in slight confusion.

"Yes?" he said. And this single syllable sounded so ignorant, so informal and disappointingly peaceful. Happy. It laced nodes in Hannibal's lungs. He did not let it show.

"Be safe." he said. The hand that clasped the knob pressed closer around the metal. He had loved to put his fingers at least on Will's shoulder, his back, his neck, but even that needed to be avoided. Still was not the time ...

_He had no time_

"And greet your… future husband." he said after him and it was like he had bitten on a bitter rod. Repulsive.

Will smiled at him. A shy spark of heat glowed in his eyes. It was real.

"I will." he promised, raised his hand as if to beckon like to joke, but then let it fall before the actual act. "See you soon."

And Will went. Without turning once. His silhouette merged soon with the semi-darkness of the corridor and completely filled darkness of night.  
Hannibal saw him disappear from his practice and his life, as he had seen him enter. At that time, at their first actual meeting.

With the feel of a pile tip inside his chest and the taste of copper in his throat.

* * *

The pastel white coated door fell with a thud into its frame as Will entered Frederick's (and now his) home.

"Frederick? I'm home." he called into the empty hall. He received no answer.

The light of the winter moon sent pale stripes through the generous glass and echoed silently from colorless corners and edges. He groped for the light switch he fancied somewhere to his right, but only touched the bare wallpaper, something that paradoxically felt to be inappropriate. Soon he took into account, attacked to trudge down the hall, guided by momentary blindness. There were no paintings he could accidentally damage. Frederick was an inveterate lover of chrome, steel and glass structures. Will found this, combined with the clinical base pallet, which dominated the entire interior of this imposing house, very often as very sterile and uninviting. He had spent many years of his life in his solitary hut in Wolf Tramp, covered in resin duftener wood paneling, scattered forest thorns and indefinable soft carpet. This _upgraded_ version meant a big change for him and it was not easy to get used to his new environment, but Frederick had insisted and Will had finally agreed for the sparkling blue ring on his left hand announced that he'd live eye to eye live with the psychiatrist anyway. Very soon. He thought he should get to know his furniture taste more and accept it. At least a monstrously staked garden encamped in the back of the house, meticulously cut square feet of lawn area on which his stray pack could play.

He checked the time and knew, his dogs were probably flanking the double bed in the bedroom of the upper floor, as they had become accustomed in their former home. Of course, Frederick took no pleasure in it, shooing them away constantly as soon as they showed up, curling on the blankets, but Will found it rather amusing than disconcerting. A Chilton, who lost his arrogantly praised contenance to behave like a maniac, wildly cursing and swearing… he had to admit, there was something strangely unique in this. It was so ... human. The only ,heat and pulse exuding, person that waited in this house's bare halls, always warned by the cane's Tok Tok. To be honest, Will only felt well here when Frederick's presence was with him. He thought it was because of his lack of talent to adapt to undetected territory. Slipping into the minds of other people was not a problem. However, sharing his life with other beings that didn't barked when he stumbled over them... He regared this form of intimacy as alien and therefore wasn't used to it. But that would change soon... he hoped so.

Nevertheless, he managed to master the winding path to the kitchen without many incidents (excluding the hematoma on his thigh he won due the meeting with a sardonic dresser). He also found the switch, tapped it, and watched in relief as the electric glow of light tubes lit up. The kitchen was furnished like the rest of the interior. Polished gray, soft beveled edges and white white _white_-ruled here in abstinent rivalry. Will went to the kitchen bar, discovered a pan and a medium saucepan; both had been thrown in the sink. He grabbed an apple. He smelled cooked noodles, roasted vegetables and thick fennel. His right hand touched the stove carefully. Lukewarm. Frederick had prepared the meal not too long ago. But where was he now? And why did he not answer him? _Determined from anger, because I'm too late_ speculated Will. Frederick was popular to be extremely unforgiving in this kind of things.

He weighed the apple in his hand, staring at the bark-brown stem, towering like a rusty thorn from the blazing center and the red-cheeked shell skin. Smooth and fresh and drily snuggled up against his fingertips.**  
**Reserved, done nicely but the real pleasure sheltering behind the facade.

Will closed his eyes and repeated the last hours in his mind intensively. His grip on the apple tensed slightly.

He took a bite with half-open lips.

Hannibal Lecter.  
What a strange man.

Usually it made little effort for Will to adjust to emotional and mental vibrations of other individuals. Usually he prevented social attitudes and contacts of all kinds thanks to strict refusal and non-participation. But on the other hand, proved sympathy could lead to enormous advantages in some situations, so often Will had no choice but to resort to it. _The curse of company, _to say the least.  
Dr. Lecter, however, seemed to be an abstruse exception. When he deliberately looked into his eyes, it was as if he would stand in black peat, or go on a trip into uncertain, nefarious depths. Both a fruitless endeavor, which dropped him with a bitter aftertaste in his mouth on the open road to nirvana. Will had felt terribly weightless, as he realized this. Realized that this man was not so easy to read like other people he had met before. Something crowned him as special and the profiler had no clue why. As this man would have woven himself a screening veil over his body.

At the same time every single movement of the psychiatrist had seemed like a ritual he had celebrated – only because of him.  
Will had felt a very original, not to say grim safety at the sight as soon as the door opened and the doctor's imposing figure confronted him. Drunken merriment, fanned by destructive stimulation, hardness and ... fire. This accent, this gear, these gestures, this minimal lifting of the corners of his mouth into a smile that would never come. Like the performance of an opera, he attended purely reserved for him. Who knows, maybe he had been to an opera before and just couldn't remember the occasion? It was an odd thought but Will couldn't describe his feelings better than this.

_"First and foremost your mental state and its regulation is the most important thing. It has been since our first meeting. But it's never too late to refresh our acquaintance in several areas. And to see what our trust of patient and therapist was explicitly founded on. The result of our friendship."_

Will sighed, leaned his head back and stared with tired lids in the cold beam of the ceiling light. He was not sure how to feel about that doctor, or better, what he _should_ feel. He was only aware that he had definitely sparked something in him. Whether this _something_ was good or bad he could not say, but the warning idea crept inside him that he would find this out very soon. In one way or another.

Amnesia was a nuisance.

"Have you walked through the hallway in the dark?" asked Frederick ten minutes later, raising an eyebrow. They sat at a table of pristine fuchsia. Before them the warmed vegetable casserole steamed on their plates. The dogs were distributed around their feet, sitting next to and under the table. Will grabbed the fork Frederick gave him without looking up from the wood panel.

"I couldn't find the switch. Did you?"

Frederick scratched Winston absently between the ears, as his snout tapped into his lap, pleading for some stroking attention.

"I know this house as I know my own body, Will. Of course I've found it." he replied calmly.

Will had to hide a grin by taking another bite. _I know this house as I know my own body._ He could have provided quite a sarcastic comment about this formulation, but Frederick was irritated enough by his tardiness and he didn't dare to dance on the volcano tonight. He was too tired. The conversation with Dr. Lecter had cost more strength than he had previously realized. He was exhausted, but in an surprisingly acceptable, relaxed nature.

They ate in silence. For a few, blessful moments.

Then.

"Well? How was therapy?"

The question came out of the blue, a shot in the dark, but Will was prepared.

"How should therapy be? Enlightening?"

"You don't want to tell me."

The profiler poked in his noodles.

"No." he said gently. "Conversations between therapist and patient are private and you know this better than me."

"Yes. Indeed."

Will sighed. He took another bite, chewed slowly.

"I think I was a little snappy at him." he muttered.

"Why?"

"Well, there was something about him that somehow made me furious. He was engaging and distant at the same time. But he seemed still ... nice."

"Nice?"

"Don't worry, you're nicer." Will insured him quickly, disarming the risk of misunderstanding. He took a bite of the casserole. "You didn't tell me that you know him." he said, chewing.  
**  
**Frederick winced hardly noticeable.

„Briefly." he observed, pecked out the aubergines between the pepper strips and ate them individually. We're colleagues."

"Dr. Lecter said something similar."

"Uhu." was the only comment to this. Will sighed inwardly. Thin machined lips, grinding of teeth and a worryingly streamlined forehead. He knew that look. And he did not like it.

"Stop that."

Frederick did not even look at him.

"With what?" he said. His voice was hard, almost bitter. Will took it with an unimpressed swallow.

"You know what. You're pouting."

Frederick made a face like he was sucking on a lemon.

I'm not pouting." he said.

"You do it right now." Will replied dryly, lashed out with his fork and pecked a few pieces of unloved peppers from Frederick's plate, only to replace them with his own eggplants. It had become a ritual-serving between them within last week, a downright homely touch and Frederick let it happen without comment. Will knew that his fiancee liked this behaviour, even if he would never never speak aloud.

"I could treat you just as well. Even better." it suddenly snapped and to be true, the profiler had expected no less. They already had this topic yesterday and since then it underwent a tedious routine. Intuitively, he put his free hand on Frederick's.

"I know." he said soothingly. "But Jack and Alana insist that I should have a therapist, I don't call _darling_ accidentally. The dual intensity would only span our relationship. And I don't want that." With every sentence his index finger stroked over the warm skin of his opponent. "Besides, haven't you enough psychopaths in your job already?" he whispered.

Frederick raised a doubtful eyebrow.

"You're not a psychopath, Will ... not a dangerous one at least." he acknowledged, turned the hand and laced their fingers.

"Oh, what a great relief to hear this out the mouth of the renowned conductor of the Baltimore prison psychiatry."

"Ha Ha. Don't get cheeky."

"What a pity. I'm just getting to the good part."

"What about Dr. Lecter's methods? Did he harass you too much? He tends to unfold the psyche of his patients politely, but ruthless nonetheless."

Will blinked. Lecter's words echoed in his mind. _Sure he didn't want to spread any gossip about me._ _Rumors tend to evolve nasty._  
He felt a spark of unplanned sympathy, an unerring sense of belonging to the psychiatrist. He knew himself what triggering rumors among people were able to do and what damage they could cause. He suddenly felt the need to be… protective.

"Whoever told you this, lied." he replied, sharper than intended. "He wasn't facing me in any aggressive or harassing way. He even spoke of a friendship we had established before the accident, that should be extended to build anew. He didn't want me to feel uncomfortable." The fork was a metallic sirene sigh of itself as it rattled against the plate. "I've got very few friends."

Frederick put the cutlery demonstratively aside. His face resembled a lunar eclipse. Confusion and melancholy.

"You've got _me_." he drawled and prevented to deal with the defense that Will put forward. Apparently he did not care - or it simply did not surprise him.

Will snorted. He was angry about Frederick's behavior, but he did not want to fight.

"I know." he said. "But I think that this therapy could actually help me, Frederick. Especially when I have to work again. You know what will… happen, then."

The words hovered in the air, difficult and foreboding.

„Hm." Frederick said finally. Sighed. He looked as if he would host a funeral. "You know what? Do what you want. But don't be late again. Or you'll sleep on the porch next time."**  
**  
Will smiled vaguely. Frederick gave way slowly but surely. It was something he could work with with.  
„I promise." he said, leaned forward and kissed his fiance on the cheek. "It's a great feeling to know that someone is waiting for you, you know? Someone who walks on two legs, I mean." He chuckled.  
„Yes." replied Frederick, pulling Will closer to him and directing his lips to his once more. "But it's not such a great feeling to have to wait for someone who isn't coming." he growled.

"I always come home. Even when dinner's cold."

"If you say so." He grabbed his cane and stood up. Although he was a little wobbly, he forbade Will's aid with an annoyed hiss, something Will usually used for his stray family. He aspired to the exit, while the profiler collected the plates and put them in the sink. They were both no particular friends of doing the dishes, which is why they often moved this activity to the next day. "If you're still hungry, dessert is waiting upstairs."

Frederick threw him a long look at these words. And something in this look told Will he hadn't meant food by talking about _dessert_...

They turned off the light.

For the next hour he thought neither of Hannibal Lecter, nor of the deer monster he met in hospital, which now stood in the hallway, watching their excited actions through a crack in the door in silence. With a claw-filed hand it rubbed notches in the wood frame.

The creature was not happy about this development.

* * *

"Will needs a break."

Jack sipped at his wine glass for very long before he gave a reply.

"You know as well as I do this isn't feasible." he said. His voice was heavy and stubborn. "We have a new serial killer. This time he seems to have entrenched in the area of Seattle. I already exempted Will for seven days. More I can't give him, if we want to catch this bastard in the following weeks. On Monday, he'll accompany us to the scene of the first victim." And as if to emphasize his words, he took a bite from his fork. They ate dessert in the living room of the doctor, while the fireplace in front of them washed wavering shadows on their faces. Clafoutis, a French dessert. Jack grimaced with delight. „Delicious." he shared with Hannibal. The psychatrist nodded, but did not let him break off the conversation for something so trivial like a munched compliment.

His last meeting with Will had been two days ago. On Friday he would meet him again, and Hannibal looked forward to this meeting with mixed feelings.

That's why he had invited Jack to dinner this evening. He wanted to talk to him, convince if possible. If that wasn't enough, enchant and ultimately persuade. Hannibal was allowed to choose the methodology. He had a racy repertoire.

"Jack, since the accident happened, he directs his value due the performance he can provide to the FBI. Something he hasn't done before. It's a negative trend and I don't dare to judge what could develope of it." His voice sounded stricter than before, and the sentimental feeling of a lion mother protecting her cub crept over him. Body shielded, claws sharpened, with brown fur and bared teeth, growling. He knew very well, perhaps better than anyone else how much Will could actually tolerate, but he feared that the full impairment of his imagination would be an additional burden for his amnesia's that definitely was _not_ in his interest.

"He survived worse. He is physically healthy. What this speeder has bequeathed him are scrapes and bruises, a tolerable damage. His memory loss doesn't limit his empathy in any way."

"But it changes his view of himself and the people around him. I fear he'll get sick of his own company."

"I'm sorry he doesn't remember you. I don't like it that he resides at Chilton's place. Although the route to his house is shorter. There is always a nuisance when I knock on his door. He reacts very irritated when he has to share Will with other people. Will wanted to pay him a visit the day before, but he has dismissed her unceremoniously by slamming the door in front of her. Worse than any shrew."

Hannibal forced a thin smile upon his lips. Jack tried to oust his situation with caustic wit. But it did not help him across the miserable punchline that Will still lived in Frederick's house, slept in Frederick's bed…

_God knows what unorthodox methods the renowned Dr. Chilton applies to when Will awakes in the middle of the night. When he is hunted by one of his demons and he struggles, screaming and sweating._

The mere thought bit sour in his bowels, cackled like a hyena in his ears.

"It isn't just that. I learned early in my life, to cleave professional affairs from private ones. I speak not only of Will as my fiance, but as my patient. From the outside he may seem stable, but his state is critical nevertheless."

"I have a responsibility, Hannibal."

"You also have a responsibility for Will." Hannibal replied dryly.

"Don't you think I know that? Don't you think my responsibility for this guy is clear to me every day I see him standing in front of a mutilated corpse and watch as his gaze turns dull and he slips into the head of another killer ? It's true, he's fragile. But it's good he's not all alone when he gets home. Apart from his dogs, I mean."

Hannibal's eyes fell into a darker shade at Jack's last words.  
"He's not coming home." he corrected the agent without paying him a look. Instead, he watched the flames and smelled the sharp-tongued ashes of the fireplace. A sip of wine draped his lips with a cool wet sheen. "He now lives in a foreign land. I wished I'd be allowed to lead him back on the right track at least."

He felt Jack's dark eyes rest upon him.

"You know you're not allowed to do that. Will has to search and find his memories completely unaffected." Jack sighed. The echo reverberated like a bear's growl in the deafness of the room. "Of course, temptation is great, but ..."

But the evil prevails." added Hannibal immediately. "I'm well aware of that, Jack. Just imagine Bella would suddenly stay with another man every night and address you with a polite _Mr. Crawford._ Tell me how you would feel about this."

For a short time there was silence between them. Only the crackling of burning logs painted the rhythm of their breathing until the agent cleared his throat.

"A defeat, I believe." he said, his voice gave away how uncomfortable he really felt. "I don't want to think about it for too long."

"Exactly. I don't want it either." Hannibal turned his glass thoughtfully in his hands. "But I do. Every night. I can't help myself." It was always conducive to proclaim some sort of vulnerability in the agent's company. It made Hannibal more human in the eyes of the outside world and therefore incompetent to such grotesque murder crimes, as they were committed and celebrated by the Chesapeake Ripper.  
And to his own involuntary amusement, Hannibal had no difficulty to represent this form of vulnerability now - it was a bud, born of a real tribe.

"From his current view it's ok to be engaged with Frederick." Jack went on and pulled the doctor away from the gap of his thoughts**. "**He loves him ... imagines to love him. It would be rude to sabotate an established relationship."

Again. This flimsy splinter of warning. Hannibal tskd.

"I've broken many taboos for Will already." he said**.** "Breaking another one wouldn't cause him more damage than Frederick does. With his enormous empathy he tends to take over unsavory habits of Frederick quickly."

"It sounds as you'd evaluate Will's behavior as ungrateful."

"No. It's quite clear to me that this state and the resulting behavior are not his fault. But it's difficult not to be angry with anyone, right?".

"And who is the chosen one?"

"I'm afraid the time will show."

They were silent.

"Three days." it finally crumbled from Jack's mouth. "More rest I can not give him. Three days must be enough – to start with."

Hannibal looked up. A thin eyebrow pulled its northern route to his forehead.

"Why the sudden change of heart?" he said. (Although he might have expected it to be true.)

"Well, to be honest ... „ Jack said while the chair creaked as he stood up. "I don't want to be on your list of brutes, if I can avoid it. My instinct tells me that you take vows of vengeance very seriously."

Something told Hannibal that this verbal wink was only half rooted in jest. He smiled anyway, expressed his good will.

"Your instinct is excellent. As always."

After that, their conversation was in shallower environment. It was very late at night when Hannibal led the agent to the front door. They shook hands at the door frame. As this would have been a business meeting and not a simple visit of _friends._

"I can keep Will on his toes but only in the working field, Hannibal." Jack said in the end. "I can't influence what is going on with him privately."

Hannibal nodded. He closed the door when he saw Jack get into his car and put on the seat belt. The whine of the engine entered and squealing tires rang in soft earth, but he paid little attention to it.

He thought of Will.  
He thought of Will far too often lately.

Earlier, Hannibal would have compared the profiler with an instrument, maybe a harpsichord. A delicately strung construct of different tunes, each key a cascade of sweet soprano, tenor and baritone.

Now he was no more than a glass bone game whose limbs only beat together when a soft breeze of wind approached. It troubled the psychiatrist with each passing hour.

The first week of twelve had passed and the second was already coming to an end. Time was an ungrateful factor that knew how to diminish rapidly, the more urgent one clung to it.  
Hannibal thought about it as he went through the house, down the stairs to his cellar. Two weeks of twelve were gone. So ten weeks were left. In the third week, Will would have to go back to new crime scenes again and his brain would act like a sponge, soaking up with new cruel / destructive scenes hungrily. The nightmares would return, as they liked to do, punctual, complete and without mercy. Hannibal had them under control before, closed with lock and key, but would Frederick be able to apply the same understanding? He truly doubted it. Frederick had made Abel Gideon throw his own identity away like an old snake skin to plant the invented, intricate profession of the Ripper inside his brain. Would he do the same to Will? Will was not to be corrupted in a big hurry, but the amnesia and the resulting naivety profiled many vulnerable areas. Too many to which Hannibal was not given full access anymore. This angered him though he wasn't fond of this emotion. Anger was the younger, stupid brother of carelessness. Carelessness was an idle issue. But wrath was powerful. Hannibal managed it like God - he was rather powerful than idle.

Loaded with such thoughts, he put the light switch on and elegantly snaked through the corridors, his every move irrevocably focusing on his approaching end goal. He went down the stairs to his cellar. The room he entered reminded of an emergency chamber in Baltimore State Hospital. Hannibal fanned the suit jacket from his shoulders and grabbed a plastic green coat he tied to his body in quick motion. Pale white gloves made of latex followed, snuggled up with a loud, screeching (satisfied) clapping against his palms and fingertips. He pulled a mask over lips and chin. All routine, everything a matter of discipline. He wore the costume of the _miracle healer_ not for the first time.

He, however, did not come to give life, but to verify it.

In the middle of the room stood an operating table. A round lamp frame was attached upon, shining down on the man underneath like a blind Cyclops. He lay motionless, influenced by drugs and wrapped with bonds. His black hair was combed from his forehead, so that it adherded flat and dull to the skull. The yellow iris was dominated by a feverish, cottony shimmer. His perception stumbled on a crumbling bridge of reality and dream. He was naked, the broken leg wrapped in a bandage. Hannibal could see how the strong muscles on stomach, arms and chest stretched and contracted with every breath, still covered with fading bruises of the previous accident. His genitals nested in a crown of curled pubic hair, hanging limp and drained of blood. Not for long… he hadn't sharpened his knives for nothing.

"Hello, Francis." greeted Hannibal his patient. His voice had named itself with a sought-friendliness, but it did not melt the stony hardness in his maroon eyes. Francis Dolarhyde turned in his direction, listening to the foreign baritone cluess and frightened. The light fell on his face, clearly illuminated the harelip disfiguring his mouth by force. Traces of oily tears shone in his yellow eyes when he saw the lambent scalpel in Hannibal's hand. The question of _why?_ was evident in the width of his pupils, dilated in animalistic panic.

Hannibal approached, carrying the cold, sharp metal over the warm, slippery skin sweatering in fear. A whimper was heard, but he ignored it.

"You have to acquit a debt." he answered the unspoken question. "You caused damage to someone who means very much to me. Can't go unpunished, can it?".  
Dolarhyde swallowed hard. His face was clothed in confusion. He did not know what the man was talking about. Hannibal would change that. He took a photo out of one of his pockets, lifted it to the bound man's eyes. It showed Will as he sat bashfully smiling at Hannibal's harpsichord, the fingers sailing over the keys with uncertainty and laughter. A few curled tresses fell over his forehead, painted the picture more natural, warmer. His blue eyes sparkled in reflexive distrust and building amusement as soon as he noticed the camera. He was just about to lift his arm and shield himself when Hannibal_ squeezed the trigger._  
The snapshot was from October. Dolarhyde focused on it and knowledge as well as horror flashed in his eyes. Hannibal watched him.

"Right. This is the man you involved in a car crash two weeks ago. He's gorgeous, isn't he? But because of your carelessness he doesn't remember me." he said, putting the photo back gently. Then his expression shifted in an almost pitiful manner. "You have taken my heart. Now I need to take yours in return." he went on. "Would you like to apologize for your offense, before we proceed?"

Dolarhyde stared at him. With significant effort he opened his mouth.

"F-ffaggot." he pressed out stuttering, but in an impudent tone, backed by the speech impediment that clung to him since birth.

Hannibal pursed his lips behind the mask.

"How rude." he said. "Congratulations. You've expanded your ordeal for three more hours. I'm able to cope one night without sleep."

Then he grabbed the scalpel tightly, drew it like a dagger. Tattooed the work he intended to create in his mind, painted in a gorgeous color scale behind his eyelids.

And he began.  
Shortly after, Francis Dolarhyde started to scream.

* * *

**O roe, thou art sick**

_O rose, thou art sick!_  
_The invisible worm,_  
_That flies in the night,_  
_In the howling storm._

_Has found out thy bed_  
_Of crimson joy,_  
_And his dark secret love_  
_Does thy life destroy._

~ William Blake


	6. Blood Voice

He went over sand and splinter strands.

On bare feet he crossed the wide plain. The sun had already left him for hours, hiding behind mountains, coloring the horizon with a border of gold. He walked and walked without knowing where to go, felt sharply drawn grains on the soft skin of his feet, painting rivulets of blood behind him. His gaze was empty and his ears were deaf. The land was barren and rough like a single, choked out rock. Even the wind seemed poor in strength, blowing miserable through his ebony curls. His arms hung to his sides like metal, his eyes looked forward. In this state, Will fulfilled his way, went on a route he did not know. He was not able to remember where he had started and what was waiting at the finish line of this beginning. There was no aim for him anyway. The blood woven into the hard ground deposited in the drought, hovered in the cemented sky, broke a gurgling groan. Will did not care. He had to move forward.  
**  
****Where are you going?**  
_I ... I don't know._  
**Did you know it earlier?**  
_Maybe ..._

Will raised his head when he heard the familiar / strange clacking of hooves, operating near his continuous fornication. He peered out and found what he actually did not want to find. He stopped unsteadily.  
The deer being, caught in a human skeleton stared at him with its emotionless, crystalline eye sockets. The bony shoulders reminded him of pointed hats fictional magicians kept wearing, the rib cage lifted tight and leathery from the parchment-like skin. Will watched as the creature breathed and the bones of the narrow chest rolled up and down. The monster was naked and dark and its limp cock hung like a dead oak leaf between his legs. Will did not like to admit that he also paid attention to this, but in fact, he did. He took all in what his feared sight had to offer, each intercellular detail bored into his corona and he knew he would never forget any of them.  
First, the figure stood idly while copying his own staring with unbelievable indifference. Then, after a time that could not be measured here in this weird dimension, the nature went towards his direction. Slow, sluggish, but patiently it led its steps. And the sounds that caused its hoofed feet were swallowed by the sand with zealous hunger.  
Will did not move from the spot, could not, it was as if his legs would fail to work, refuse to obey him. He could only stare, stare,_ stare_, stare at this creature, this outgrowth, this gods curse. And just now he was the one it had chosen as its next victim. Him. Again and again. Why always him? Why not anyone else? Showed his empathy _no_ limits? Did it even give shelter to mythological monstrosities? Will was instinctively aware of the ancient culture this creature had been taken from. Behind the antlers stuck a story, but he suspected that digging deeper would only bring more misery. He should not have to deal with situations which brought him closer to the origin and nature of the beast ... in the worst case, they would get used to each other and strive after closeness on own initiative. Will shuddered at the thought.  
The deer man had arrived in front of him. They faced each other in silence. Filled with shared emptiness. Will soon noticed how his breathing rhythm involuntarily adapted to the beast's and he hated it, hated himself that he could not control it. His lips trembled, his fists clenched and his guts rumbled.  
"What do you want from me?" he asked, his iris soaking in useless rage, as he sometimes drowned his throat in whiskey before going to bed. "Why don't you just leave me alone? What have I done to you to deserve this?" His voice sounded harsh and shrill in his ears at the same time. Two huge pendula rubbing at each other and starting to crumble at the edges. He wanted to scream, but his lungs did not allow this action. Thus unfolded an almost gentle, pitched tone to the essence that looked almost thoughtfully at him now. It tilted his head to the side, unleashed a crack, which would have hardly surpassed the breaking of a branch, and wandered with its white eyes over Will, head to toe. Except for boxer shorts and a worn-out, greyish shirt he wore nothing that could have protected him from intense scrutiny. Movement and escape were no options, so he let it go through. Every second felt like thousand tiny, red-hot needles poked under his skin, pierced the bonds of his muscles and the shell of his core. It was inexplicable to him, how a single, pupil-less look of this dark companion could give him such displeasure. Was it not like being touched by a blind man? (Then why should he be so scared?)

... No.  
It wasn't.

A blind man could see nothing. For Will, however, it was like the creature saw everything, just because it should **not **see. Maybe this was what scared Will the most here. He avoided eye contact with good reason. He saw too much, he saw too little. He looked, and it was enough to bring his nerve to bite. But when he looked into the hungry skull holes of this existence, he saw in anyone's face - he saw his blurred deception, a hilly area of sooty mirror glass and was unable to allocate.  
Whom would he recognize there when he washed the dirt from his sight? A friend? A lover? An enemy? Himself?  
What if he regained his full memory? Did he really wanted everything back? Fill the gaps? His concern was still great, so why bother? He had a man who loved him, friends who cared about him, a work in which he promised murder victims higher justice by helping to catch their perpetrators.  
Why? Why would he want to go back? Only for one person's sake? Or was there more he didn't know of…

Maybe he was better without those memories. Maybe there was something bad, something terribly ugly, and his mind had decided to leave damaged parts like these hidden.

Maybe.

But if this were true, why was this skinny creature here? Why did it haunt him, stood facing him, stretched out its claws and straddled his chest, pressed flat and light on the lukewarm meat plate under the chemically forfeited layer of fabric, right where his heart exercised its rapid beat rhythm. The touch was carefully rehearsing and so unspeakably/ indispensably cold that Will began to shiver and his pulse stopped for a reckless moment. His lips notched a fine line in his chin. Had he expected that it would feel like this? Had he already felt this kind of cold before?

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. YES.

Noye. Yes and no.

_I don't know!_  
**You don't want to know!**

"What - Who are you?" Will asked softly. "What do you need from me? What shall I give you?"

The creature did not move, nor it opened its thin mouth to an answer. (Whether it was able to speak at all?) Its touch remained, weighed like sclerosing honey on his skin. Will waited, breathing and alive, observing. There was an almost peaceful atmosphere, although the fear lasted about it, spread like a moth-eaten bridal veil.  
**  
**He felt as wet streaks ran down his cheeks.  
It took some time before he realized he was crying.

He was not sad, overall he felt very little. It took a little longer to realize that he had begun to empathyze with the creature and that its grief was reflected as his own. He looked up to a face that could have been carved in ebony or resin. A face without expression, without joy, without meaning.

_This creature was like one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals. One could feed it, keep it warm, but no one would have put it on machines. A beast, a ghost, an agony raised to die. But it didn't die and that was the true shame of it all._ **And nobody could ever tell what it was.**

It was a dreary imitation of being. A blink of an eye in the universe's context.

Will was still crying and forgot to be ashamed of it. It was a silent weeping, a shedding of dispassionate tears. Something Peinvolles glowed in the hollow coffin that had been stitched inside skin and horn. Something vulgar. An abnormality of grief. Will found no necessity to be sad, no pity, no tender feeling. However, he did not stop crying.

The sky above them darkened in fluid balance. The cloud carpet cracked, broke up and let rich rain drops of blood flow across the plain. The drops hung like chewy magma in Will's hair, clung to his temples, his forehead. It was a world-border contrast to the icy fingers of the antlers man and the profiler felt ambivalent, defenseless and totally out of place ...

At this moment, the hand of the beast fell without resistance into his chest and reached for the swelling organ beneath several layers of skin and bones. Will did not even gasp. Something told him what happened and that the cold worked within his body, clutching around organs and flesh, but he did not really _feel_ it. His perception was inserted in cotton wool, dull and crude. He knew that the hand of the creature moved into his flesh, he knew that its spider fingers closed around something specific, fairly big and precious. He knew that the smacking meant a tearing inside him and that something was happening. That something was taken away.

He pushed down his eyelids, counted to five in spirit. When he flipped them open again, the beast held his heart in its claw, blood bathed and brilliantly shining red. Rain watered the frenzied cycle in which it steadily beated in the rosy Chrysalis. Will stared at it.

_This ... is mine._ it echoed in his brain, beat against the walls of his skull, generating waves of **monotone** agony.

He breathed. His lungs fanned up and curled back. There was no pain, no pain.

_This is mine!_

And Will, who had just been stripped of his license to live, saw the thief with the mocking antler crown, opened his mouth and screamed and cried and mated with the sobbing wail of the damned.

* * *

With a choppy panting ar seven o'clock in the morning, Will Graham woke up from his shattered sleep.

The first thing his tormented, slimy sticky / clogged sense strands detected on was the ringing. A horrible ringing, a terrible ringing, a monstrous, perverse, a bleeding ringing. It came from the left side, trembling, gasping on the bedside table. Will focused only on his breathing, tried to not forget, not to prevent, not to unlearn. In. Out. In. Out. Frederick lay beside him, softly snoring. He slept soundly. Wills shirt was drenched in sweat and his eyes blinked wet. Dully he sat up, leaned forward and reached for the phone. His fingers slipped off from the plastic as if they had been rubbed with butter milk. He needed two attempts to take the desired object from its holder and finally bring it to his ear.  
"Will?" it cried into his ear like a demon bell. He fell back, leaning precariously on his elbows. The skin he wore suddenly felt too huge for him, too hot and washed out. He wished he could pull it off his shoulders but he could not, was not able to. It was the only one that suited him initially.  
Jack calling him could only mean one thing_. A new murder. I smell death in the line_.  
"I'm here." he replied weakly, sprightly, like an old man. And maybe it was not quite as wrong as it might have been in common parlance. His inner and outer age had increasingly moved with time and extended into opposite directions. He had seen too much of what others should not see and had lived too many lives that had not been his.  
He was an acrobat on varying platforms and each time he took a step forward, he expected to plunge into the choking blackness under his feet.

"We have a fresh corpse." it answered him out of the apparatus.

Silence followed. Will's breath swept through the air. A salt-clad bead of sweat flowed over his neck.  
Then.  
"I'm sorry, but you should really take a look at this. It's urgent."

Will sighed quietly. Every muscle under his skin twitched like a cat when its fur drowned in rain, proven discomfort glinting in its eyes.

_Two days_ whispered it devilishly cold in his skull. _You bastard wanted to leave me alone. I have two days left and now? A week later and your trained bloodhound must arrive at the bomb field again and dig for some fresh bones. What would you do without me?_

The dreams had returned three days ago. He had not even been near a crime scene, but Jack had had to send him photos. Photos and descriptions had been enough to pry open the gap into hell again. Today would make this even worse.  
Like a hornet's sting, Dr. Lecter's voice flashed into his mind, penetrating and stabbing his nerve endings with bliss.

_"You could stop."_

_Yes, what would you do without me, Jack?_

But these considerations were washed away quickly. He knew his position, his task. His _raison d'être._

"Where?" he just asked. Jack gave him a State, a distance about two hours from Baltimore away and that a helicopter waited at the police headquarter and would bring him to this the crime scene instantly. The profiler hung up without saying goodbye. The handset banged hard like cracking thunder into the holder. In the next second, Will cursed quietly. He thought that Frederick would awake now, winking at him sleepily and muttering angrily about his _fucking_ disorder.  
Nothing like that happened. Frederick slept like a stone. Although Will guessed that the helicopter was waiting for him and any unnecessary minute he wasted would cost him something, but he took his time to study Frederick's completely relaxed face. The crow's feet around his eyes had stretched out smooth and invisible over his pale skin. A beard shadow surrounded his jaw and thin lips, that blew rumbling air out of a narrow gap. His arms wrapped around his torso unconsciously, the back had a gentle curve inwards, which made Will think vaguely of his dogs, curled peacefully dozing on the lower floor in the living room. He held out his hand, stopped a few moments in nervous suspense before he weighed it on the back of Frederick's head and ruffled his hair. Without the gel, the psychatrist used more frequently than Will would have liked to, feel the dark tuft of soft, wiry hair. He loved that. It was a small change to his own outrageous curls. The sleeper did not move, gave no sign as to whether he noticed the contact or not.

Frederick looked old and worn out, even in twilight. Older than usual, careworn, but that did no harm to Will's affection for this man. He knew only too well that Frederick Chilton could definitely behave _more_ youthful than he always seemed to be. Often enough he surprised him with his frenzied outbursts, this pure, unprecedented emotions he put on daily. The arrogant, pushy, conniving layer, he buttoned upon his suit each morning was just a mask, one of many Will had met within these months. Not everything that glittered consisted of gold, but Frederick had let the profiler dig a bit deeper so that he could find some gems. Maybe he had found even more in the past. Although his memory was splintered when he wanted to remind their first meeting or date or recall their impending antipathy, then sympathy or the foundations of their burgeoning relationship… he simply blamed it on the aftermath of the car accident and hoped those images would clarify in the near future and paint him truth.  
Until then, he would do exactly what he did for more than a week now - living with this man and give him what he'd otherwise never given to another person. Himself.

_And he prayed that the psychiatrist did not intend to waste him for pure joy_.

He got out of bed and dressed as quietly as possible. A kiss on Frederick's cheek was all he could offer him at this early hour without depriving him from his punctured salvation. Then he went downstairs, gathered up his car keys and slipped into winter-proof boots and a thick jacket. He scribbled a quick note on a little slip of paper. (_I'm sorry._ stood there in waey letters among other things. Will harbored the increasing need to apologize, which he even noticed himself and wondered. However, he was never able to shut it down. Maybe it would vary in time.) and fixed it after some hesitation at the coffee machine, an object of which he knew without doubt that his fiance visited it shortly after waking up.

Then, he had to hurry up.

* * *

The flies had already started to lie their eggs when Will visited the crime scene. But it was still too early for the insects to grow into maggots and to feed on rotting flesh – the corpse was just a few days old.

The profiler trudged with Jack at his side through the muddy morass yesterday's downpour had left over several states. There was a smacking, greedy noise when he put his shoe soles on the treacherous ground and with every step he felt a little, claustrophobic sinking when he paused and stood too long in the same place.  
The murder scene was generously fenced with neon yellow tape, trying to put the passers-by outside. But it could not stop the curious crowds to stand behind the barrier, gossiping and freezing in their fur-lined clothing and curiously stretching their necks like giraffes.  
_Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather_ it roared in Will's thoughts and he admitted that the quote was aptly chosen. But could he really blame them? Death fascinated everyone somehow and nobody was ashamed , no one wanted to taboo this subject. Well, even the Old Testament of the Bible was defiled and stained on multiple pages with murder. It was morbid, dramatic, yes, but not illegal to take a look and talk, to hide and bask in disgust and adversity, provoking such scenes in almost all populations.

It was almost _human_.

Will licked his lips, tasted polynuclear frost dust on his tongue_._ The wind was harsh, carving invisible knives scraping against his cheekbones, numb and cold as prison chains. Except for the fluffy blanket of snow and the silent cobalt sky this place could have been the one in his gruesome nightmare. The striking resemblance brought him a stomach turning and it was as if the victim had not been unloaded and prepared here without reason. He found himself biting the inside of his right cheek, sipping with his tongue tip on bare flesh until Jack lightly touched his shoulder, involuntarily pulling him out of his half-finished trance to confront him with the bloody ceremonial spectacle in all its sharpness and salty odyssey of pain.**  
**  
An inclined side glance to the earth was enough to suggest Jack some distance. He heard his stumping steps and how they went away, his heavy breath plowing the air while he inhaled. He caught a single, rambling thought of Bella, garnished with tingling fear of loss and regret to see her in pain and being powerless on the other hand. He'd like to offer commiserations and pronounce his sympathy… if he had been aware that some clever words would have given even an ounce of comfort to this man. He did not like lying to himself. He knew that only one message Jack Crawford could provide a wave of honest joy in his personal disaster **-** the news that Bella's cancer had miraculously found its end, that it had dried out and wrinkled like a sunburnt plant, thirsty for rain that had never dare to come.

But this was merely a figment of imagination, a wishful thinking, similar to how it might occur in some serial killers' heads from time to time.

_I'll stop._

At some point I stop.

Only this one.

I just want one.

He will be my last.

Then it's over.

This time.

Never again.

Forever.

Gone.

_Over._

One could have compared it with the dependence of a drug addict. They talked about it, said they'd have it under control, were able to stop instantly. Perhaps this was even possible, for a few weeks, months, half a year in which they were devoured by no more than memories, always unreal, always clumsy and battered while rushing through empty nights ... nothing was meant to last forever. Not even a self-initiated end.**  
**  
Eventually it was stirring again anyway. The animal in man, the monster in the childish cosmos of evolution, scratching on the walls of its breathing and sore vessel with long nails, screaming in need, mouth wide open and spread like the ruby throat of a goldfinch and craving for fresh, for wet vats of bronzen blood. It was born out of greed and would never get enough. It was doomed to indulge in a never cooling hunger. Neither God nor Lucifer would have been able to change that.

Will had encountered this animal in man for countless times, slipped under the skin and carved with its fangs over the victims' flesh. He had shared the hunger and loneliness with it, the longing for fulfillment / redemption, the hubris of its actions that became_ their_ actions.**  
**The murderer and he, he, and the murderer - where did the one began and the other stop?**  
**Sometimes, they would blend into each other,mutate and merge into a single colossus of sin. Like a couple of inseparably entangled limbs at the climax of the sexual act, embracing each other and rubbing, bumping into and cry cry _cry_ until either blood or semen or both covered their skin with sticky smears.

Will stood in front of the center of the murder scene, trying to keep a steady breathing rhythm. When he was sure that his heart was calm and strong, he closed his eyes and plunged into the sea of known blackness that had accompanied him all the previous times. He saw himself floating in the bottomless air as the golden pendulum swung behind his eyelids, watching how the corpse dissolved in various stages a few meters in front of him. He observed how peeled flesh was seamlessly drawn across the gleaming muscles again and torn fingernails and toenails were added to their rightful place, saw dim blood and scratches fading into the void. He looked at so much that he forgot to see, his eyes hurt he felt horrible and yet it was as a living opera house opened, greeting him as honored guest of the premiere. He was welcomed. Someone had awaited him for a long time.

He walked through the corridors of his blind, empathic perception, sensed an ordered chaos, the desire to kill, the dying swan in headless blood ballet. Locked doors, dead ends, there were no walls, just endless, cruel, barrier-free width. A deceptive prairie of thought.

Will sank into the darkness of another mind and was caught there like a moth in a dew glistening spider web, fought, suffocated. Gave freely and finally willing to be what / who he was.

A monster.  
A monster with eleven fingers, hands, and eight thousand mouths. Kali in a man jacket.

Will opened his eyes.  
He was no longer Will.  
He was the murderer. He was Kali.

* * *

_The air tastes dry and cold like sand dunes in October night._  
_My chest rises and falls in obscenely uneventful order. Day after day the same game, the borrowed heat under my skin a parody of the steady decline of my cells._

_You're lying in front of me on the table, chained with straps on wrists and ankles. Your tears glow like dirty wax drops in your eyes, shovel bright streaks in your fatty degeneration of welding temples until they sag in your close-cropped dark hair and suck in. You're naked, pale as chalk and helpless as a newborn blindly crawling forward because it smells its mother. You are not blind, you're awake and staring at me with these yellow eyes. The rings of your iris are thin, swallowed by the darkness of your compressed pupils, dilated with panic. Your tolerably corrected harelip jitters along with your lips in rushing clock. Yes, I see the scars. They stand out phantom white, glued on the rosy color of your flesh. How often did you have to expose yourself to ridicule? How often did you have to suffer under the laughter of others? How often do you have to endure it today?_  
_It does not matter, you've done your duty on earth. Today is the last day that you must be ashamed of your deformity. Today is the last day your voice will lisp._  
_I offer you salvation. A life for a life, isn't that fair?_  
_I am a generous man._  
_My scalpel hovers over your warm skin, shapes here and there deeply with a sharp blade. Whining rises, as the first thick drops of red fall to the ground. Whine, scream, beg, curse as loud as you want, no one hears. We are alone, alone with God and his shadow that ensnares the world._  
_The cuts lie down and deep, stoke to patterns that I distribute on your chest. Small scratches, edges, straight lines and angles, symmetric pointed and craters. You are the soft sheet I hack my message in. Don't move, or you'll taint the word._  
_This is my gift to you. I'll create a new destiny, make you better than you are and will ever be. I release you from the monotony of your existence, the suffering you caused other people by your mere presence._  
_Be grateful._  
_I am your Messiah. Worship me._  
_I will remove your eyelids so that you remain vigilant. Pull the skin of your feet and arms, tear your nails from the sore, rosy flesh. Your sounds reverberate unabated in the room. I cut off your tongue._  
_Better. Must be careful that you don't choke on your own blood. Suck. Rusty tears on my hands. I wipe them off on your shoulders._  
_Another cut, very long, very deep. Chattering like a zipper when I split your skin. A hole in your chest. Your heart in my hand. It is pounding and pounding and pounding._  
_Not mine, but mine become._  
_(I want it back, have it again)_  
_It stops. You still shrug. Reflexively. Your breath stuttering, spitting, a gurgle._  
_The voice of your blood._

_Then silence._  
_The silence of the dead._

_... I'm cold._  
_I miss the warmth of my mate._

* * *

When Will finally got out of his trance, the hand of his watch had moved shortly after twelve o'clock. Neither the mutinous crowd of spectators nor the BAU team had gone. Will exhaled sharply. His boot soles sunk in sludge and frosty earth. 14 minutes had elapsed, during which he had not done anything (for passersby) than to stand in place and obstruct the already limited view of the disfigured corpse. No one knew that he had reconstructed a murder in his mind and it did not interest anyone except the wanted list of the FBI. Trembling slightly, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The old migraine climbed nimbly up behind his cranial cavity, almost mischievously tapping against his bones. The lines of an old song soared in Will's corresponding thoughts.

_Hello__darkness my old friend,  
I've come to talk with you again  
Because a vision softly creeping  
Left its seeds while I was sleeping  
_  
His migraine knocked briskly to the clock. His temples were its drum. He raised his head, looked at the victim one last time. They had impaled him on a torture stake, as Vlad the Impaler had massively used it during his ruthless domination. The wood drilled directly through the point at which would have been the dead heart otherwise. But it was not there. Just as the eyelids, which should cover the yellow eyes, but they appeared naked and cloudy. Will knew why. For a moment he had been there. The victim was a man with dark, thinning hair and had neither clothes nor any grace left. It had been taken away from him. His dignity, pride, compassion ... and then… his life.

Will watched as the silhouette of the antlers being from his dreams stepped to his side and stared at the work with a unique curiosity. The profiler shivered. He pressed his jacket tighter against his body and waited for Jack to approach him, asking about his progress. Then he could get out of here.  
He felt very miserable.

_And the__vision that was planted in my brain  
Still remains  
Within the sound of silence_

"Will, look into my eyes. Please."

Will focused on the seams of his beige-colored jeans. He did not dare to meet the older man's gaze.

"Why?" he asked grudgingly, reminded himself of a petulant child who crouched in front of the closed rectorate and regretted his tone. His voice pulled himself dull and narrow-minded through the atmosphere. A tingle stabbed in the inner tunnel of his larynx. Only with coarse effort he suppressed a sore yawn.

A few meters towards him leaning Dr. Lecter on his chair, tapping the index finger of his right hand periodically on his knee. He looked completely in balance with himself and his environment, the body tension held minimal stress or pain. Will did not need to take a direct look at this man in order to know this. He felt it, sensed the microbial changes in the seething air. The images of past days, the nightmares involving the murder of Dolarhyde, tingled like drooling pitch over his shoulder blades, each time when his lids fell over his eyeballs and the darkness built itself in bloody concoction of bone wax and networks of muscle fibers. He did not believe for a single second that he could conceal his current sleep deprivation from the psychiatrist. For this, the beleaguered shadow in the hatch of his eyes was too deep and the sporadic view at the carpet beneath his feet too twisted and idle.

"I want you to look at me directly while I talk to you."

Will shook his head in afflicting reflex. Slow, very slow motion, one to the left, then right. Expertly. Exhaustion bit in his synapses, as well as in the pitcher of his clumsy manners.

„I can't." he said. "Eyes are deceiving. You see too much, you don't see enough. It's an exhaustive circle."

Dr. Lecter bowed his head gently. Even reverently, although this term did not play a special role in Will's vocabulary anymore. Within a few days and three sessions, his heart had rigorously recognized that every move, every twitch and every tongue licked word that emanated from this man possessed a personal, dominant devotion. An elegance and grace that one might not expect from a masculine specimen of the genus _homo sapiens_ otherwise. Explanations seemed not explicitly needed here, and he was, however, too tired to afford the far-reaching speculations for them, but the aura of the psychiatrist, it was ... unlike anything he had experienced before in exchange of social attraction and disappointments. When Will entered the practice, a blanket of dark forebodings was hovering above him, folded into the optical spectra of the blue-violet evening. When the psychiatrist held out his hand for an innocent shak then, though it was clear that his patient was not fond of closer physical contact, Will sometimes got lost in the bloody brown of this silently rushing iris. And even if Will never took the proffered hand, it seemed always to him as if this man was touching him anyway. With eyes that flowed over him like water, words that slid similar to silk from his thin-lipped mouth, with gestures that he performed only to make Will give him a pleasing smile or a cooperative reaction at least.  
Will's empathy neither stopped at crime scenes, nor it started there. It was a part of him and accompanied him everywhere working unintentionally, played and extended his sensations, uncorked his sensitive feeling and left it without breath and heartbeat.**  
****  
**"You seem to be exhausted anyway." murmured Lecter's voice in his ears. It reminded him of cold melting honey and it relieved the feverish dull, that ruled in his brain. A bit. "Do you dream much, Will?"

Will still had that much presence of mind to snort.

"More than I'd like to." he said dryly. And in the last few days he hadn't meant anything more honest than this one sentence.

"Tell me about them."

Of course, this question had to come. Will squinted carefully, leaned back deeper in his chair.

"I dream of how I commit the murder. And of… someone who watches me while doing it." he said haltingly.

"Who would this be?"

Will took his time with the answer.

"A strange root od my own gloomy fantasy." he replied hesitantly."I - well, its appearance is hard to describe. It's tall and thin, so thin that its skin stretches over the bare rib cage like film. It's nude and black from head to toe, has hooves and claws. Its eyes have neither pupil nor iris and huge antlers protrude from its head like a crown and ..." He paused. His index finger painted dimpled circles in the leather upholstery of his seat. "I think it has no heart."

Although he did not look at Dr. Lecter, he knew that the other man carefully tilted his head to the left.

"Why?"

"He wanted mine" Will replied simply, shrugged a shoulder. "In a dream he tore it from my chest."

"Why do you now refer to a masculine gender instead of neutral one?"

"It's a male creature." Will himself did not know why he had changed the sex. He knew, however, that this was a step in the wrong direction - seeing the monster as a person, equipped with individually identifying characteristics, behavior and genitals – all of this would make it all the more difficult to banish the beast from his thoughts. "And he seems to be fixed on me in some way. That's all I know for sure. I'm not aware of his true intentions ."

Dr. Lecter tapped thoughtfully against his chin. He considered possibilities.

"Hm ... I think I've already encountered a similar nature in the depths of my library." he then announced slowly. "Wait a minute." He got up from his chair and used the ladder to reach his specialized collection upstairs. Will's gaze followed unobtrusively his strong, imposing figure. Today, the expensive fabric of his fine clothes seemed to wrap sinfully tight around the body. He recognized the scent of an aftershave in the air, one he had also perceived in recent sessions. He had already begun to unconsciously associate it with Hannibal Lecter's pure state of _being_.

He rose from his chair, fought with the dizziness that threatened to attack his attitude. He hoped the sleep deprivation would not let him doze off on the highway or collapse on the sidewalk.

„The victim wore a sign on his chest." he said disjointed, loud and clear in order to focus his thoughts on clearer circumstances and force himself to remain receptive, so that his own condition would not betray him. He fumbled in his pocket while Dr. Lecter busily plowed through the shelves above. He pulled out one of the photos that had been taken of the crime scene. He looked at it a lot before he spoke again. The _flesh painting_ still sent him a shiver down his spine. "Brian said, it's a Nordic rune. Anything to say about this?"

"I should have a book about ancient Germanic roots and writing somewhere." it rang unimpressed from the counter above. Will heard the characteristic sound of heavy books being pushed back, the fluttering noise of trembling pages. The music of quiet word and printed ink. "Here, catch this."

Will had almost dropped the book, which flew out of the blue. He owed it to his natural reflexes that he caught it. He tucked accidentally a corner of the paper that he immediately sought to smooth over again immediately. He didn't want to be rude and damage things of other people.

"You're interested in almost everything, eh?" he asked, half-serious, half-jokingly. He studied the psychiatrist while he climbed down the rungs and how the hem of his suit jacket pushed up a bit, revealing a clean white shirt underneath. A few ash-blond strands had jumped loose from the carefully combed-back hair and hung in his front, but it did not detract his professionally established elegance for one second. There was something about this sight that brought Will to quickly turn his eyes away, squinting. He did not know why, but it hurt. And what hurts, one does not like to repeat. Like a child that reached out for a candle flame and burned its fingers.

"It's always beneficial to broaden one's intellectual horizon. I'm not a supporter of stagnations." said the psychiatrist, entered beside him with a self-evident manner without really touching him. Will could feel the heat radiating from his opponent's body like his own. And suddenly, the imagery of a candle flame melting under his flesh seemed not as far away as before.

_I miss the warmth of my mate._

He swallowed. Traces of subliminal mourning had shrouded the murderer like a prison cell. Who could this _mate_ be? He had meant the world to the killer, worth enough to create such a bloody fiasco with the victim.

"Let me see - here, this could perhaps coincide with the signs." Hannibal looked at the book Will had opened aimlessly, skipped two chapters until he tapped on a page with an enlarged color illustration. "_Mannaz_. Based on the concepts of Moon, archetype of month, male, man, divine structure in each individual, blood brothers, intelligence, community and humanity. The meanings pile up."

"Like Japanese characters." judged Will. Gently he ran the tip of his index finger over the photo, meticulously avoiding to meet the fingers of the doctor by accident. "Kanji have several meanings, too."

„Not surprising. Each language is a bud, fed by the same parent root of past eras." Lecter looked at him closely. "Well, what deduces your mind by given these information?"

Will's mouth proceeded in a clumsy, edged curve.

"Seriously? Very little. Each meaning is irratating." he grumbled. "I ... he…_we_'ve put a lot of dedication to the rune. We wanted to cut the lines as accurate as possible, so it has to be important. Or we just like to be a pure perfectionist."

Dr. Lecter passed the _we_ deliberately. Will was grateful to him for that.

"A ritual murder?" he said. Will thought about that.

„No." he decided. "I don't think that this murderer will kill in the same way ever again. The motive that prompted him was personally and therefore unique."

"How do you know that?"

"The attention in the details." Will closed the book and put it on Lecter's desk, leaned against it, his arms folded in front of his chest. "The clinical passion of his marks ,the controlled rage between. He has suffered and enjoyed. He has planned everything. He must have shadowed the victim for days."

Hannibal stared at him for a long time. For Will it felt as if the eyes of the doctor wanted to melt a hole in his skin.

"What has he made of him, Will?" The heavy accent held a certain expectation that confused Will a bit, for he would have expected this from Jack. Nevertheless, he was ready to follow the unspoken command.

"A portrait of his pain." he said. His nails dug deeper into the fabric of his lavender shirt. His nostrils flared gently as he inhaled deeply. "A masterpiece of his own purgatory."

At the same moment he realized what he had just said out loud, and how this might sound to other people. He lowered his eyes, his body followed with a stiff rigidity. Always the same. This fear, to do something wrong to or perverse. This fear of being labeled as crazy and sick. The whispers, the hissing, the looks. The disgust in them. The desire of abstinence. All these years he had felt them on his back, sticking to him like crowded worm traces. He hated this feeling and clenched a mental fist in malaise, and he damned his own uncertainty social interactions caused. He was excluded from _normal_ society since his birth. He had grown up to host monsters with a human face and what they left him were the dreams that hid in their shade. He was plagued by their true nature, forced to put a splinter of compassion in his flesh, because he knew what excited them, what emotions they brought into this world. He called the murder practice a work of art because the murderer himself would call it a work of art. Clotted blood as his paint, the knife as his brush. Shattered bones building the framework. Will saw it all so terribly clear before him, that he was ashamed. He understood what others refused to understand for they called it _inhumane_. His mind being held by perversion and ecstasy and the rusty remnants of other people.

It was sad, somehow. But he did not know it differently and that made it even more sad for him. The knowledge to be alone, despite colleagues, friends and despite Frederick, was sad. hurt. It always hurt and the dagger's tip of aching certainty sharpened with each additional year he lived on this earth.  
He could be surrounded by truckloads full of people and still feel lonely.

Lonely, lonely, lonely.

_Outcast._

"Will?"

Will blinked. Like fresh dew a few tears fell from his lashes and shone on his cheeks. The sudden moisture on his heated front and self-loathing skin irritated him like a young wild that had heard a shot.

Dr. Lecter's voice, his presence itself was unbearable for him in this situation and when the doctor went slowly beside him, he tensed even more. Every hair, every twitching muscle, every ounce of his mind struggled in him, telling him to open the door, leaving into the cold of the balmy evening and into the dry, stale seclusion of his car.  
He wondered whether Dr. Lecter would touch him, try to pacify him with physical contact and shared warmth of another wellspring of life.

He caught a movement from the left side, eyes narrowed in affect at the forthcoming to get over with quickly ... and waited. In vain.

"Will, please open your eyes. You don't need to fear anything from me."

Will hesitated, but then peeked through two ice-blue slots. The psychiatrist discreetly lent him a handkerchief. Will hesitated. Finally, he reached for it. His fingers shivered as if he had bathed in frost. Embarrassment and fear surged over him like Noah's flood. He behaved incredibly stupid, childish,like a teenager in his adolescent elegy.  
„I'm sorry." he said, his voice low and rough. "I ... I don't know where this came from." He dabbed his tears. The salty mixture soaked greedily into the cottony fabric.

"I think you know it all too well." danced the melodic baritone in his ear, rubbed his angered soul, soothed it. "Don't be ashamed. You've been through a lot and sleep deprivation promotes your mental irritation. Never be afraid to reveal your feelings here, Will. You are safe with me."

Will looked up. Dr. Lecter remained with him, looked at him, calm and collected. The tide of an ocean.  
_  
__He lacks the flood that waters his sand._

Two of the psychatrist's fingers sank mindfully into Will's shirt sleeve and drew his arms gently from their brutal anchorage before he spoke again. Later, the profiler would be grateful to him for that. He was not aware of it now, but under the fabric first blue bruises grew on his skin.

"You have seen through the eyes of a killer and discovered art. That's no shame. How terrifying is it for you to look into my eyes, then?"

Will managed a sad smile that rocked into a coma far too soon.

"It doesn't matter whether I look into your eyes or the murderer's. I always see too much." he assured. He breathed freer. Lecter raised an eyebrow.  
**  
**"Take your pick. You may always be honest with me."

Will laughed quietly. It was strange to be so encouraged, when thereby no FBI agent or a psychological study sat in his neck. He had believed the efforts of the Doctor would make him shy. Instead ...

Will fell into the blood-stained mahogany and forgot to intentionally open the parachute. It poked a little, this direct visual contact. But it was not as uncomfortable as he had imagined. The eyes of the doctor were like iron filaments, they held him, cooled his skin and strangled his throat.

"I see death." he revealed and surprised himself how easily the truth ran from his lips when Lecter granted him permission to speak openly.

The older man gave him an impassive look. It impressed Will a little. He had expected indignation.

"Mine or yours?" asked the doctor, his voice burdened with real interest. Will bowed his head.

"None of both." he admitted. "I see death and fire. The death of a ... dragon."

"Dragons are associated with different values. Might. Willpower. Destruction. Rebirth. Freedom. What do you connect with these creatures?"

"Hiding. The need to curl. Or to unfold..."

He saw Lecter's hasty tongue strolling out and licking his lips. Their velvety luster mocked him.

"Do you think I'm a person who wants to hide from the outside world?"

"Not in this form, no. You're not a dragon."

"So what am I?"

One breath in silence.

"You tell me."

Abrupt calmness filled the room. Then- a low, dark, rough laugh.

"Will, who treats who?"

The profiler looked down. _Oh dear._

„Sorry." He cleared his throat. "Seems like this is my limit, right?"

Dr. Lecter raised his hand as he would want to stop a march.

"No apologies, please. I challenged it." He advised the knot of his tie, fastened it tightly around his throat. "Some limits are irreconcilable. Others are meant to be broken after a certain amount of time."

Will snorted. A spark of curiosity germinated in his blood.

"Did I have previously given you any limits?"

"Well ... you've told me neither about your mother nor your father before. Even the mythical creature you pictured, is a new terrain I haven't put foot on yet. Do you think that being existed before your accident as well?"

„Maybe." Will bit his lower lip, started to pull it between his teeth.. "He is... 'familiar' to me, as strange as that may sound. But it doesn't change the fact that I watch him with healthy suspicion."

The psychiatrist pressed his lips into a thin line.

"I think I know what this could be."

He took the second book at hand, which he had removed from his private library. It was thinner than the other, but the paper was colored in a yellowish tone. Its print had to be much older. Will leaned forward and looked at the drawn portrait of the monster's face that disturbed his sleep. On the next page deposed a squiggly text in a language he did not know.  
„The monster you described to me is, inter alia, known as the Wendigo." headed Dr. Lecter in explanatory, as he felt the embarrassment of the younger man. "According to the mythology of the Anishinabe, Cree and other ethnicities, it's a supernatural being. It symbolizes gluttony. Wendigo is known for his cruelty and his taste for human flesh. The Native Americans believe that anyone who eats human flesh, becomes the Wendigo itself and is tortured forever by an insatiable hunger. Wendigowak prefer to live in forests."

"A cannibal monster." Will ran a hand through his hair. A gentle hum drew buzzing circles in his head. "What does this say, Dr. Lecter? Is it a reprojection of dead Garrett Jacob Hobbs?"  
**  
**„ I can neither promote nor exclude this possibility now." Lecter said. "It's told that the Wendigo possesses a heart of ice. You said he had snatched yours from you. Maybe he only wanted a warm-up."

"Or a snack." added Will drily.

"I guess that amounts to the same thing with this beast." his counterpart replied noncholantly. Pushing back his sleeve and peered at his watch. "Our time is up, Will. Tuesday, same time?"

_As if I had a choice._

Will smirked. The smell of salt hung in his nostrils.

"I guess I have nothing else further to do, Doktor."

Lecter nodded. He seemed to have expected no other answer. _If he had tolerated another?_

The psychiatrist accompanied his patient / friend to the door, where he gave him his jacket.

"Will?"

Named turned his head.

"Hm?"

"I know it's hard, but try to get some sleep. Pardon me, but you look like you'd be ready to fall into a coffin any minute."

The tone almost bordered on admonishing concern. It brought a little smile upon Will's lips.

"I know." he said. "Thanks for your honesty." He wanted to walk through the door, but stopped again on the threshold. "Thank you for all that you do for me."

Lecter nodded.

"Thank me by doing something for yourself."

With these words he closed the door and left the profiler alone in the waiting room.

When Will got in the car and fumbled for his keys, he found the doctor's hopelessly crumpled handkerchief in his right fist and then realized that he had clutched it all the time.

This was none of the usual paper-handkerchiefs that were mass produced, but made of more noble material, provided with golden embossed letters.

**WL**

He frowned. As far as he knew, his psychiatrist was unmarried and childless. **L** certainly stood for the family name Lecter, but for whowas this determined **W**? Strange ... and why did it interest him at all !?

He thought about whether he should give it back to Lecter now or not. Maybe it was a precious little thing for a very special person. An assumption that tasted bad for him for some unknown reason.  
He looked at his watch and realized that if he still squandered time, he would be home late. Again.  
He hesitated, weighed Frederick's anger against Lecter's. He thought of his eyes, the darkness in them. Were they ever capable to target him with anger? And did he really want to find out?

_You tell me._

On an impulse, he pocketed it. He would deliver it to him at their next meeting and this would be enough.  
Until then, he would keep it near his reach.  
Finally, it was just a printed towel, not the world.  
A cloth with a monogram that coined the name of a person he did not know, but would have liked to if he had been honest with himself. But he wasn't.  
The bitter nuance that incarnated his mouth accompanied him all the way home.

And he didn't know why.

* * *

...Sooo, I hope you liked this chap.^^ Any comments to this?

Love,

Rose


End file.
